Real Is a Vehicle of the Unreal

Will translates moral.

Moral translates social.

Social translates friend or foe,

Superior or subordinate,

Model or outcast, and so forth.

The basin is full of water.

The parking lot is sometimes

Full of cars, but not now.

The latest anthology is full

Of better poems by better poets

Who would not be so abstract,

Who would not be so banal,

Who would not stare at the basin,

Thinking of how it almost killed them

Then writing social, moral, will.

To be human is to be imprisoned

By things that don’t exist, by things

That don’t need to exist to be real.

The wind at sunset stirs the water,

And the vehicle rolls downhill.