Field, Later

"What I don't know doesn't matter."

The side of the empty mountain
Looks speckled with old snow
And cows, scattered properties,

One cow so weirdly piebald
That it looks like two cows moving
In lockstep together--a white one

Behind a black one, bizarre silhouette
Unbeknownst to mountain or cow.
You can see it, see the reasoning

Lumbering ponderously down roads
Constructed for access to owners
That someone could borrow

For poems when no one cares:
If the mountain is unaware
Of the cows, and the cows are

Unaware of their weirdness there,
Then the human must be unaware
Of something or other, other

Than what it already doesn't know.
That's the kind of careful wording
Poets step in all the time, muttering

In circles made by the muttering,
Tracking themselves in the snow,
Quoting themselves, "Lo and behold,

Now I know I know all this nonsense
For three or four or more
Dimensions simply descended,

Confusion working its way down
Through mathematical conventions
Like a flash-flood cutting snow--

There are no dimensions, just one
Direction through which we fall,
And the patterns we elaborate

Are not those we perceive and are
Concealed within us, from us, always
Falling through the long-fallen all."