Daydreamers

Strange, sometimes, to think of all these
Little human bodies milling

About, each about the same size
As each other, as deer or dog,

Each a packet of bones and guts,
Muttering and dwelling on what

A medium-sized body does
In terms of food and waste and wants

Or, mostly, fears for what comes next,
As focused as any mammal,

Any vertebrate, on hunger,
Physical safety, sex, and rest,

But cursed with imagination,
The double-edged gift of language

That enables tagged memories
To be decomposed in the mind

And rearranged in mosaics
Of chimeras, so that for these

Particular vertebrates, these
Particular social mammals,

These milling, medium-sized beasts,
These brief packets of guts and bones

That cover the Earth like a skin,
Thin and tattered but connected,

What for other brain-laden beasts
Would be involuntary dreams

That visit in sleep and vanish
Become constant working puzzles,

Dreaming infiltrating the days
Of bodies caught in human ways.