Nothing natural to the mind but other minds, language, color,
The subtle string between all things but
The things vastly outnumber the mind in specificity
But without the mind, be it dog, insect or bird.
The things recede, undifferentiated to procure reactions among themselves,
Abiding, lending gravity to what is built and becomes.

Treatise me not the flowers and moon but of a lake,
Flat and languid in its low pooling,
Some even finding cracks in earth to rest lower
In the vast aquifer, dark beneath the land, but
Moving like the glacier, slow and relentless,
Above and below,
Water in its state of liquid,
Mind proposing its state of being.
Ice predominating elsewhere.

Grab bag of a million billion suns,
Cells, habitation and a name.
Strut this hour and
By its sheer algorithm pace,
Believing the breakneck of one is but the flow of all,
Nameless, uncomfortable, quietly adrift.
An empty medium but for restless quanta of infinities
Pushing the pull to here and now
As nutrient, substrate, substance and laughter.

Granular dust on the face of sand and dunes that crumble leeward
From the wind’s summit dropped,
Capable of so much more
As we drift off in the boat of sleep’s pleasure,
On the raft in the lake
With glimmering notions pulling
As the twinkle around the oar stroke reflecting the down pull and the star light
And the harbor light and the home thought in the heart,
That the pull of what is hard is the promise, incognito
Of what is easy, promised, deep and silent all around
But for the rage of its mindless noise.

By Rolf Stavig,
5/6/2023