Not How It Works

Just between here and where your senses reach,
The number of interactions staggers—

Every little electromagnetic
Wavelet interlacing with the others,

Every pulse of every animal heart
In the immediate vicinity,

The billions of microorganisms,
The thousands and thousands of kinds of them,

The libraries of data cavorting
And converting more data in midair—

Everything that is, just from here to there,
In the bubble of which you are aware.

In the middle of all this, you’re living,
Calculating, and making decisions,

You, with your solo, multi-chambered pulse,
You, as your own sum of microbes and thoughts,

Trying to find a path to the story
You can tell about yourself happily,

Proudly, humbly, at least consolingly,
Bright thread through fog. But that’s not how it works.