Dawn at the Cave of Mind’s Bones

Morning, and the mind is hungry,
Lean predator at the entrance
To the cave of the Bones of Mind,

Surveying the broad, dun valley
Of pale waves of long grass—the cave
Itself, the true skull, holds the bones

Of the true prey, strange arrangement.
Mind is what . . . Autophagous? No.
Mind is autosarcophagous.

Mind obligately devours mind.
Mind can’t live on anything else.
No wonder mind’s lean and hungry—

Less hunger means leaner, regrown
Muscles lead to greater hunger.
You can ditch the analogy,

Drag the mind out of its skull cave,
Compare it to cancer instead,
Or to a swirling pandemic.

Still, any good analogy
Will have to move. And mind devours
No other kind of food but mind—

The mind is always on the move,
Always hungry and invasive,
Always forming and reforming.

Consider the life combining
All of those traits at the same time
And realize mind can’t be alive,

But also that life’s less than mind,
Mind doing the realizing,
Itself a small snack for the mind.