The Wise Student Will Try to Visualize the Figure from the Diagram

You won’t have to look hard to find
Someone with diagrammatic
Explanations of how things are.

From flow charts for an industry
To mystic occult chemistry,
Things seem more real visualized.

It’s also not hard to sense how
All diagrams misrepresent
By excising whole dimensions—

Of volume or change, for instance—
To chart a spindly elegance
That outlines the true skeleton.

Ponder this as you encounter
These lines, most likely while you live
Wrapped around a grown skeleton

Still busy producing stem cells,
Blood cells, plugged into the networks
That float you as societies

Float the fantastical notions
Of faiths and ideologies.
Do you think your skeleton’s true?

Do you think it’s a diagram
Showing how skeletons function,
Much less the bent bones within you?