Estimate

What to value more—
The immediate
Incoming just past,

That rushing water
In the pipes, someone’s
Music through the walls,

Or the distal past
Of childhood, weeding
The backyard garden,

Thieving strawberries
In the humid heat,
Or the human past,

The ancestral crimes,
Or the previous pasts
Deduced from traces,

The trajectory
Of insatiable,
Sweet, suffering life?

Ah, none of it, none.
Stare at your fingers.
They’re coming undone.