Every Dump’s a Library; Every Library’s a Midden

Changes smear space over time.
You and we, we still don’t know
What changes are, what change means,

What meanings are, for all that
We’re all both meaning-makers
And meanings ourselves, for all

The work we’ve put in trying
To learn to speak in numbers
And prediction, to converse

With the universe clearly
And fluently in its own
Language. How like you and us

To project human culture
(Language! Really?) to the whole
Of possible existence,

As if horses not only
Had horse-faced gods but believed
Some form of whinnying must

Undergird the universe.
As if, but worse. It changes
So much. We can’t even ask

What this place was yesterday
When this place was all over
The place, so not any place,

Much less this place, yesterday.
Still, extrapolation feels
So good to the weepy ape

Like grooming, plucking out nits,
Quietly searching the fur
Of a cosmos that’s okay

With you in propinquity.
When you’re studious, you feel
Like you’re under protection,

You’ve been accepted, and we,
We’re right there with you, your tools.
But the cosmos is as like

You as you’re like an atom,
We suggest. You look at us
As if your tools betray you.

You throw us down in disgust.
Work up another toolkit,
Now that poems have worn too dull

And numbers need programmed help.
Whole heaps of us gather dust,
Changing, like everything else.