Surely You'd Agree

That what I guess one must call “poetry”
appears to be
for me
the only way to grapple with eternity

and daily life, like tea
and toast and marquetry
and issues of diplomacy
as tethered to the cherished hope of certainty

that one can keep calamity
from happening is something to which he
and you and they and it and she
may give the barest nod, but generally

no one can be counted on to care about the policy
I bring to saying what I’ve come to say, or see
the point of explicating abstractly
what ought to dive and swim both fresh and free

into and from and in the sea
of consciousness without the least coerced complicity
from him or you or them or it or her or me.
Surely you’d agree.


.