The Library That We’ve Made Of Ourselves

Sometimes we get so close to each other
we can even recognize someone’s face
and hear their voice without a telephone.

Sometimes we get so close to each other
we can extend a finger or a hand
and touch someone or be touched by someone.

Sometimes we are scientists and study
a person’s features, everything they do
and say and we ask specific questions

and catalogue all the things we find out
about this person so close we taste them
and smell them and become experts on them.

Then one day like an apple that falls up
when we’re sitting under a tree thinking
the person so close walks away from us,

does something our science cannot explain,
contradicts all identifications,
undermines our epistemology,

and we look at all the books around us—
the library that we’ve made of ourselves—
and we throw away each one of those books.

I don’t think we would learn more if we sent
robot spacecraft to orbit the people
we tried to understand with our science.

I don’t think we would learn more if we went
into space ourselves naked and aroused
instead of the robot spacecraft we send.

As I type this—put these words on a page—
the almost full Moon is high in the sky
and it’s not falling or walking away.

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Enceladus Was A Child Of Gaia


The Wind, Here In The Sea Of Clouds


Scientist At A Hamburger Stand



Expedition To Amy