Radiant Beings

Human lives as memories,
The names remembered or not,
The bodies certainly dead—

Here’s your supernatural.
Whenever humans began
To remember in language,

You began to be haunted
By everyone you knew gone.
And if, through us, they lived on,

Or lingered, at least, as thoughts,
What else wasn’t possible
In a world constrained by words,

Who are ourselves unconstrained
By the presence or absence
Of whatever we contain?

Language was our miracle,
But, like winged flight, we evolved
At considerable price.

Whatever flies is condemned
To staying forever light.
What talks trails clouds of half-lives.