must look so small, undetectable even,
from the vantage point where I imagine 

a god could see me, and I do sometimes  
imagine a god like a sentient star

out beyond where our instruments 
could find it, then I talk myself 

out of the image. Out of the concept
entirely. From a distance, I know 

I’m an ant tunneling my way 
through sand between plastic panels, 

watched—or not—from outside. 
My puny movements on this planet, 

all the things I’ve done or built 
with my own body or mind, seem 

like nothing at all. But from the inside 
this life feels enormous, unlimited 

by the self—by selfness—
vaster even than the sparkling 

dark it can’t be seen from.

I often don’t know what to do. Or if I want to.

Dawn has long broken while I still drag my feet in the mud inside my head, hope for coffee, make a B-flat moan. To prepare the plunge into action. Or not.

Maybe I want to cast only a passing shadow. Feel like my mother’s “Thank God” when she took off her corset.

But I am worried there’s something I ought to be doing. Afraid I’ll die without having done anything. “Realized” myself, you call it, but wouldn’t that just mean limited myself? A cement mixer stuck in one motion, even if it helps build a house?

So I delude myself into thinking I’m doing something when thinking. Or when descending into the night with the cat and dreams of the cat.

You say, no doing without sweat of the face, thorns and thistles, and bringing forth children.

Should I look, instead of worrying about fine distinctions that escape my eyes? Listen, instead of fretting about the size of my ears? But can I cultivate my garden without becoming a cabbage head?

The hand gets ready to write. Could we not call this manual labor? Or a stage in the Great Work of rendering the corporeal cat incorporeal while giving her body to the bodiless word? Even if it‘s from despairing of my own body?

You say, my writing is so slow it’s more like gravitational condensation. Or dust gathering on the cleaning supplies.

It’s true I’m dawdling as if I had time to watch the formation of geological layers. Though night already seeps through my brittle bones.

I certainly don’t know what to do to end my days “gracefully.” But the body dies all through our life, thousands of cells every second.

So everything should be very clear.