Agnosemy

Meaning remains cued by context.

When phenomena puzzle us,

We take our hints from their contexts

Framed in our own experience

And by double-framed devices

Deduce what’s been indicated,

What this phenomenon must mean.

It’s animal; it’s innocent.

Lost in the past generations

Of our monophyletic kind,

Somehow began a new habit

Of making meanings portable,

Extending indications’ reach

Out of immediate contexts,

Perpetuating reference

As stabilized gestures and sounds

Reproducible far from home.

Contexts still mattered, very much,

But like our other portables,

Our sticks, flints, gourds, cloaks, and pouches,

Our straps and baskets, our meanings

Now could be kept in hand, carried

With us, yet more consequences

Of the freeing of our forepaws.

So, we tucked our meanings away

And produced their tools as needed,

Explaining, gesticulating,

Narrating, cursing, defending.

At what point did meanings become

Capable of constellating

Contexts of their own? On their own?

On our own? True organisms

Create boundaries, lipid walls,

Skins, rinds, layers of defenses,

That mark them off from existence

As mere, non-living processes

In a cosmos without edges.

Do we patrol our boundaries?

Have meanings become living things,

Indicating we’re on our own?