-- Labor Day, 2021 –
Each one is an unascertainable distance -
each leap to a better or purer thought
than the dull one you are entertaining right now.
Offer it tea, then bid it polite good riddance.
Let your head be a room of abject nought.
“But I want more tea!” it screams. “Give me more! Hǎi yào!*”
What if it suddenly turns profound, like Yoda,
and reveals gold in the quotidian,
development in what you thought was the coda,
the climax recomposed in Mixolydian?
(Adorno spelled backwards reads Onroda.)
It’s like to that purer thought as Plato’s caveman
is to that sketchy Form on the back of the wall.
And I’m an ontological layman,
finessing something grand from the scruffy and small.
[*Mandarin (loosely): “Gimme more!”]