The Cooperation of the Words

It’s not the psychology of cooperation
But the cooperation of the words
That matters most, that helps you learn

What you manage in elaborate groups,
Things no one or two or few of you
Could ever learn from mere experience,

No matter how innately predisposed
To teaming up and helping each other
Get through. When a human traverses

The ice deserts of Antarctica, sweating
In specially designed and manufactured
Ultra high-tech clothes, you are not alive

Mostly due to what you yourself know, nor
To how kind everyone has been to you,
Although it doesn’t hurt to have those.

You’re alive thanks to what words know,
What the names and counts and terms
Preserved, our shimmer hovering over you.