Why Most Poems Are Portable

Poetry didn’t come first.

Meaning was late in the game.

Then again, so were people

As you know them, nameable

Moderns, their identities

Symbolic in the simplest

Of types of communities.

The leading edge of the storm

Was always indication,

Waves of shouts and gesturing,

Sotto-voce whispering,

Pointing, drawing attention.

It’s a good phrase in English,

By the way, good idiom—

Paying attention. Paying

Attention, as respect’s paid,

As debts and wages are paid—

Attention is a resource,

Always was, always costly,

Limited and limiting

Resource at that, and the most

Equable, democratic,

If you still care for such things.

Before humans were modern,

Screwing the Neanderthals,

Denisovans, and other,

Less fortunate archaics

In passing, everyone was

Already into pointing

And demanding attention.

Meaning was weirder, later,

A gift that kept on giving,

A kind of phosphorescence.

This pattern gets repeated

In every disruptive wave

Of breaking technology—

First, deictic information,

Instrumental, demanding

Attention, enriching some,

Destroying many—the point,

The spear, the poisoned arrow,

The chariots of archers,

The record-keepers’ digits,

Administrators’ carved reeds—

Pay attention, you, or else.

Later, the meanings. No one,

Despite what you tearfully

Feel after a good story,

Understands why the meanings,

Why your tales attract meanings

Until they’re lit up with them.

Tricks like poetry, later

Still, just forms of basketry—

Descended from whatever

First helped to carry water,

Coals for future fires and lights,

Tools for shaping more tools with—

But adapted to carry

The weird light of your meanings.

Catch and carry, poetry.