That Ship Is Canon

Life’s so busy in language,
Especially in writing—

But the life of just living,
The substance of most living,

Is less frantically peopled,
Even in noisy cities,

Than it seems to be in poems—
Less interactive, less snarled.

In ordinary moments
Of quotidian function,

People carom and scatter,
Bouncing off of each other—

People fall into daydreams,
And boring activities,

And stretches of nothing much
To do with one another.

But in texts, relationships
Take over, grow entangled,

Become engines of thinking
About being--what it is,

Or what it could be, should be—
Texts are lousy with people

Entwining most of the time.
Sometimes, the easiest way

To get away from it all,
Is to put away the book.