Dhyana of Sema

Environment makes the loner,
Society’s hedge for surprise—
No loner ever makes one self.

The lazy ant, the single cell,
The solitary wildebeest,
The locust no part of the plague—

Each finds itself distributed
Somewhere on the periphery
And never quite gets the signal,

Never quite manages to merge
With the emergent behavior,
The strategy of its species—

Migration, fruiting body, cloud,
School, swarm, stalk, civilization—
Never to play a whirling part,

Never to know the part that’s played
By the lost individual
Left out in the awe, just in case.