Hearing Thunder for the Second Time

I’d like this all to be a singularity – but every time
I have to square the quantum weirdnesses of “inside”
with the relatively calm predictabilities back up here

at the surface – not that that is always so serene,
and not that everything that happens inwardly is
so bizarre – disparity is more my guiding star.

I’ll have to move into another home before I’ve gone
too very far into the Spring, and here’s the thing:
I’m fine, at least in part, in my psyche’s skin and heart,

but I’m vexed the way a baby is perplexed at hearing
thunder for the second time: he thinks that he
remembers, but is awkwardly aware that something

inexplicable has dared again to alter his perception
of his place in space and time, so idiosyncratically
distracts him with a sense of mutant wonder

that his psychic apparatus seems too blunderingly
wrong to cope. In other words, he feels a dope.
And since he is a baby, cries. Well, I am not a baby,

and the situation lies in such a way as to invite me
to surmise myself into a linearity of story in which
I will soon arrive exactly where I ought to; what

I’ve brought to the occasion is a willingness for
something else to drive. But honey, all this rhyming! –
something’s nervous: quantum wildness mixes with

the yearning for the soft and unrelenting mildness
of the known: the net effect of its collective
echo in my head? “Baby, you are on your own.”


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