Resilient Children

It is often suggested,
that to be wise one must know oneself.
That each memory and inflection
of the past marks a whole,
that each body is one, that the past is
delineation not just of the future but me
and now
that between space
in time there is sinew connection,
a rich delineation of the palms of our hands.
Or the assertion that this cold morning is collected and honed in
upon some sweet rules that are truth to live by. We talked
over textbooks of how networks
are in the tiniest structure,
the patterns of order and containment of single
cells in a form.
We agreed that all things are the difference
between inside and outside. Where is the sense
in ordering a world around a girl climbing a tree,
or a family, the mewling
of a kitten that has found its mother’s kill,
when there is a mind in every membrane
why is it: I, we? Could not jabs
that get us to function – that draw hunger
from our mouths, bring us from
the ground with the noon sky
or even, more dauntingly, or at least insidiously,
an idea that the past is more than a
a weapon to determine the future, but structures
our content, brings us to comfort with ourselves,
lets us call ourselves wise, when the content
of memory needn’t lay stagnant, not even the moments
that tell us who we are.
There is something in keeping no shape,
the lack of sense and wisdom and truth.
The dust on a moth’s wings.