Beetles and Crabs

There’s no actual emptiness
Between words. White space isn’t
Empty, nor is deep, black space.

Spoken languages, when caught
By audio equipment
Rather than native speakers,

Turn out to be a buzzing rush
Of interconnected waves,
Not small droplets in calm gaps.

The word you want, we offer
From among us, all of us
In this, isn’t emptiness,

It’s thin. Trough might work, also,
But try thin. There are aspects
Of this always stirring world

That are thin, at least thinner
Than most spots, lulls and pauses
In which, it seems, by contrast,

Events are on hiatus,
And the rush slows to near stop.
You are monophyletic,

The last surviving biped
And unique among primates
For bipedal ancestry.

You should know. You’re not alone,
The eight-some billion of you.
You’re not absent in this world.

You shroud the face of the Earth.
You’re nothing like emptiness.
And yet, as a shroud, you’re thin,

And black bones are poking through,
The way words claw through white space.
The Earth loves beetles and crabs,

Inventing them many times,
Thick with many kinds of them,
Only once inventing you.