Reply from Laodicea

We were thinking about spring
Water, how it can boil you,
Peel your skin, stink of sulfur

Or come out so cold from stone
That it hurts your bones to swim,
As the old poem sang pity

For the horses fording it.
What goes on below the dirt
Has as many confusions

And quasi-conversations
As anything overhead.
Humans are attentive beasts

Obsessed with labeling things,
Noticing how living flesh
Was always in the middle

Of extremes. Those aren’t extremes.
Those are more middles of things.
Let attention guide again—

Every discoverable
Extreme has so far turned out
To be more middle of things.

No matter where you landed
Among cosmic scales, you would
Be middling as everything.