Meanings Never Wholly Tethered

Some people never were,

Nor felt, as one writer

Wrote in one poem, lovely,

And infinite, and young,

But what is infinite

Anyway? Tractable

In math but otherwise

An impossible word,

One of many like it.

Imagine a language,

A poetry at least,

Made only of those words

That have no tangible,

Experienceable

Referents. Wonderful

Such words exist at all—

Eternity, afterlife,

Divinity, nothing,

Soul. Lovely, infinite

Terminology, loose,

Unmoored from the senses,

Who first invented them?

How is it anyone

Can find meaning in them?

Some people never feel

The divine as a wind,

The infinite as pools

Of clear ink to swim in,

Youth as a quality

Of firmness, lost by them.