Similar Pines at Sunset

The lowest branch of the ponderosa
Trailed like a closed peacock’s tail on the ground.

What is similarity or sameness?
What is likeness that you take note of it?

Any like phenomena will break down
Upon examination, into lists

Of sub-phenomena itemizing
All the ways they are and are not the same,
 

While any sameness scrutinized dissolves
Into likeness. Nothing, only nothing,

Is ever identical to itself,
An identity hypothetical,

Since nothing’s by definition outside
All phenomena and experience,

Although it seems to be woven through them
And draw them on, somehow, draw differences,

And with their differences, their likenesses,
A ponderosa in a peacock’s tail.