Testimoanial

Contra Shaw, I am content to be
"A feverish, selfish little clod,
Ailments and grievances complaining,"

Not a force of nature in the least,
Except insofar as living makes
Anything living one of the least

Extensions of that extraneous
Force neither gravity nor nuclear
Nor electroweak nor whatever:

Life, nature, the mystery of this
Rock, blue bead, pale dot, every life lived
And folded back into the water.

I whine and complain, therefore I am.
I exult, embrace, desire, therefore
I am. The scurf on a seiching wave

Time's winds fetch from the living systems
Of patterns consuming more patterns,
My microbiota, my genome,

My cultural imagination
And I stand out a little, little
While from the background radiation

On a cloudy day in Canada
Near a lake long and thin as a snake,
Fine as God's fingernail pairings, this.