The Thing We Know Today

The hunger won’t be sated –
that’s the thing we know today:
despite the fact you sit here
with a sack of pretzels on your lap:
they aren’t very good, in fact:
why does all the salt fall down
into the corners of the bag?

Naked pretzels taste like what
they are: hardened flour paste.
Your hand keeps digging anyway:
perhaps one crisp reflection
of a perfect pretzel paradigm
is somewhere there – ready to
appear when you are least aware:

ah, but you’re too needy, greedy:
cannot be surprised by chance.
Unless it is the chance that this
disgruntled moment constitutes
one tiny quiver of one eyelash
of the lidded glance of some
great creature – of whom you are

infinitesimally part: unless this
craving in your stomach and your
heart amounts to one slight
twitch within the crow’s feet
on his sensitively pebbled skin:
unless you are a necessary
sort of meshed few molecules

that help a billion others guard
whatever aids experiencing light:
unless you’re part of some
strange complicated apparatus that
enables sight. Perhaps your ornery
distress is part of some much
larger being’s yearning for success

at seeing more than he had seen
before: an itch that leads to
an enlightenment. Ah – but on
the way: these salt-less pretzels –
and your craving, unabated..
That’s the thing we know: today,
the hunger won’t be sated.


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