The Act of Consciousness

Self awareness is behavior.
It’s an action like the beating
Of the heart. It’s never the heart.

It starts. It stops. You wake. You sleep.
You’re something happening or not.
The flesh that keeps you happening,

The society that keeps you
Happening, they’re always changing.
At some point they won’t perform you.

Dwell on it, while you’re happening.
You could be the wind, reflections
Of the moon on a midnight lake,

Always a series of events
Going on, the flex of a pine
In that wind, the electric lights

As they come on in Manhattan
At dusk, the synchronous fireflies
Deep in the Great Smoky Mountains.

You are being generated,
Orchestrated by everything,
And frequently, daily, switched off.