As a Storm Darkens the Sky Over Tompkins Square Park

First of all, of course, it’s beautiful:
like looking out at England. But note
effects, and causes – how it pauses
then lets go: regard the simple physics
of the thing: a tension builds within
a cloud until the sky ejaculates
and claps and rings. You snap a finger
at a crystal glass: it pings – you rinse
a bowl and put it on the drainer by the sink

to dry: evaporation, gravity can be relied on
to exert their forces with an efficacy
that does not surprise – in fact,
will reassure you that the Universe
is quite the right-sized enterprise
that you’ve been taught to realize as
testable – each day you wrest a breath
from lung and air and dare to move
an arm to lift a hand to press a key

and then another key and then another
to produce transliterating symbols –
inky strings implying sounds denoting
meaning – which in what you’ve
come to hope is shared reality
are leaning towards expression
of what you want most to shout: a general
alarm attesting to the rash absurdity
of anything at all. Drop an apple: it will fall.

But understanding how a dropping
apple happens – and how the notion of it
ever came to any human brain – and why
and what a human brain is – cannot
not appall. As if the whole array was
normal! You want to find the agency
of change, which is to say the thing
that brought the thing about. Somehow,
somewhere, there is no doubt.


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