Choices Are Consequences

On the whole, you trust the first
Simile more than the next
Two—if it looks like a duck,

You’ll presume that it’s a duck
More quickly than if it quacks
Or walks like a duck. You are

An ontological duck,
And you rank static essence
Over behaviors as truth.

Even judging behaviors,
You assess essential type
First, ahead of its complex

Of preceding behaviors
And succeeding behaviors
Through which its act resonates.

A lie has consequences,
You say, more interested
In establishing the fact

Of the lie than in asking
As a consequence of what
Earlier developments

The behavior you’ve picked out
And isolated as lie—
As thing, name, common noun,

Not process, not consequence
Itself within processes—
Happened, and with what results.

If it looks like a duck, but
Doesn’t walk or quack like one,
It could be a duck hunter’s,

And, while we’re at it, if it
Makes duck noises in the reeds
And looks like nothing but ducks

In the vicinity, it
Could be a duck hunter’s blind,
Not at all duck behavior.

That blind is a consequence
Of choices that were themselves
Consequences of more things,

More variables than you
Could ever collect, but if
You track down those behaviors

You’ll see they’re not ducks at all—
They’re duck eliminators.
Now what are we saying here?