The Buddy System

Sink into any landscape
Unpeopled in the foreground—
A cloudy sky if need be

Over your crowded city,
An empty set of ball fields,
A night sky, desert, or lake—

It doesn’t matter. Just world
Absent of too many signs,
Languages you understand,

Social dynamics you parse.
The most asymmetrical
Relationship of your life—

No, not with your deity.
God’s as peculiar to you
As your thoughts, undergarments,

And ill-considered tattoos.
We’d almost guarantee you,
Your divinity’s you-shaped,

Much the way your shadow is—
However distorted, huge.
But not your relationship

With taciturn landscape,
With any setting not signs,
Not two-way conversation,

No taking turns, no sharing,
No prayers, no needs of its own.
That one. That face of the world

When you turn so you face it,
The wind you feel off the waves.
You can love it. Embrace it.

It’s not the same size as you,
Shape as you, doesn’t need you,
But it interacts with you.

That’s the asymmetrical
Relationship should strike you.
How does anything like that

Sort of a world generate
Any blue will-o’-the-wisp
Talking to it as you do?