present imperfect
*
Out of millions of images,
what causes some to cohere in a poem?
In the absence of water, flora, fauna,
what is the smell of the Moon?
If a bird has its pinions severed,
is flight denied that creature forever?
How can the torturer's sense of time
and the victim's be the same?
Is our first utterance as we enter this world
merely a cry of pain?
Why is it only later, as if in mimicry,
that we learn laughter?
Why is it that in birth and death
we seem so alone,
no words can cross
the threshold to pre-conscious self,
or ford Lethe's river
to those who come after?
Are dying and being born one?
How is it that no human guide
can chart such perilous terrain?
When we gaze upon the newborn,
we sense how imperfect we have become…