Everybody harbors naïve ideas
About objects and their extent
That an object is an object
That extends no farther than it does
But measles grits bowels exists only as plurals
And we love the commas and the semicolons
Delimiters that don’t exist in nature
Various openings defined by the geometry of negative space
The stoma the vagina the eye
Especially those interior spaces
Those mental objects memories wishes responsibilities
The tulip tree with its straight columnar bole
Which I view now only with my intellectual spy glass
Its outlandish box-shaped leaves
Its cones cousins of magnolia cones
In turn cousins of pine cones
Its leafy greeny flowers streaked with gold
Shaped like tulips and in turn like verres de vin
And what of those stomata
Does the tree begin with their molecular edge
Or perhaps with the tubular extensions of the root hairs
The tree breathes the very air I breathe
And drinks in the nutrients that nourish me