The Hollows

We do need encounters
With others than ourselves,
For words to have meaning.

It won’t come from within.
We can’t bump into it
And expect to mean things.

As voices and gestures,
We’re so ephemeral,
So in your social flow,

We seem more like dances,
Animal rituals,
As if your languages

Were like all the other
Ways lives communicate,
As you mostly assumed,

Imagining the speech
Of animals and plants
You knew best, extending

Your metaphorical
Kinship systems to them,
The insects, birds, and beasts.

But there’s something strange, off,
About us, parallel
To your geometric

Habits of perceiving
Abstract simplicities
In webbed phenomena—

Triangles and spirals,
Circles, constellations.
We’re more like chalices

For meanings that might be,
Those meanings you perform,
Those meanings you bring us.

We hold pure howl in us,
But howling isn’t us.
We’re meaning’s nets, wings, husks.