Q. I feel bad that I don't know what a "broomschlager" is.

A. We are not allowed to deal with emotional problems.

Phenomenal Farewell

From the embrasure of their evergreen fellows

deciduous cottonwoods and aspens—

a Montana cast of thousands—more like hundreds—maybe tens—

call loud attention to themselves, wedging in Douglas fir, poking around

and slipping through cedar and pine, their yellows

clapping, their reds a cheer, all their leaves hallooing,

the desperate trees themselves about to bound

from the stage of autumn into tiers of October sun.

            Wait a minute: nothing so fanciful teaches

truth. Things are not what they seem

if what they seem overreaches

so much. Actually, they’re not applauding

back at us or pushing fir aside, they’re done,

that’s all—

I mean the leaves. What we’re seeing, hearing, lauding

is the end of one more season in our heads, another curtain call

for minds over-kindled by vivid sunbeams.

It just so happens that they most wear well

in show-stopping glory, dry-leaf phenomenal farewell.

Moral: Don’t exaggerate, unless absolutely convenient. Or unless you’re into fables.

Otherwise, speak plain...like:

Goodbye is—goodbye.

The Bengal Tiger and the Himalayan Yak

“I am more and more plagued by a single question,” said the yak from Nepal: “What is the meaning of it All?”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said the Bengal, “and sorry that you are not well.”

“Who said anything about being sick?”

“You did. I distinctly heard ‘plagued.'”

“It was just an expression, a figure of speech, a vague make-do word. You know.”

“Yes, I know. So—it just popped into your head, a sort of accident? Well, there are very few accidents in the ways of the mind. Everything is relevant. Furthermore, for your information, whenever somebody speaks in virtual capitals, saying ‘Life’ or, as you said, ‘All’, they are not empty locutions either but broad, urgent, fraught, and he is saying that he is already lost in some wide catch-all empyrean, an indefinable Every Place or No Place—actually annihilation—and probably for a long while already—gone, as they say. How far, we shall soon determine.”

“‘Gone?’ I’m insane?”