Does a potassium ion qualify as part of a tree
Only after it pierces some imaginary portal plane
A wide receiver winning at the goalline
Whereupon it enters the vascular system
Whose participation in tree we take for granted
And even exploit for our gums resins and syrups
And when we speak of that object designated a human body
Do we include the many organisms
That populate the gut the blood the eyebrows
For our primate brains labyrinthine though they may be
Perceive a world of discrete objects
Defined within our homely folk traditions
Our primate folk back to our arboreal forebears
Or perhaps earlier to scurrying insectivores
Or ovipositing monotremata mammals hardly mammals
And we cope as best we can
With the knowledge that every object
Is composed of a congeries of objects
Is more or less radically unstable
Changing from moment to moment
And that all objects exist
That is they must of necessity exist
In intimate relation with other objects
Our perceptions tuned over thousands of millennia
To the earth’s diurnal course mostly imperceptible
And the level horizon of our spherey home
In short the objective world that composite concept
Clumsily oversimplifies the real world
Oversimplifies even that portion albeit overmuch which we perceive
Until we quit the regiment of personality
To cleanse and throw open the doors of perception
A world that nevertheless extends beyond and outside perception
However vast and variegated
To comprise transcendent entities undeniable
Such as math facts and let it be said moral facts
To comprise among its many qualities that of consciousness
And who among us would indulge the jejune narcissism
Of arrogating consciousness to homo sapiens alone
Just wise enough to grant our infinite ignorance
When we behold the sapience of other primates
Sage orangutans and convivial bonobos
When we observe the dog who barks up the wrong tree
When we watch the file of ants plying their pheromone telegraphy
When we peer with our clever microscope at the unicellular alga
That propels itself with tiny whiptails
Toward the lifegiving light
Sans eyes sans taste sans nervous system
Even as strive mighty tree and scrawny sapling
While ciliated paramecium hastens to escape excess of heat
Itself a symbiotic composite with algae
And swinging single bacteria meet mate and exchange genetic material
And a single immunodeficiency virus
Little more than a strand of DNA
A single polymeric molecule vested in its fatty sheath
Knows to highjack the genetic composition of its host
We say know
But a tree no doubt knows not as I know
As I know not as tree
But I should respect though I will never fully know
The experience of tree
We say know
For we see and we say
We human primates
Our optics colored by sanguineous rosiness
Our vocals tuned by primate antiphony
The FOXP2 shared by monkey and mockingbird
Language not a prison house but a dwelling
Furnished with all possible thought
From whence to venture out
Out and into the one great poem
Let sing be finale of see
And what force gives the potassium ion
To join with the nitrate radical
Or disjoin from it
Who fathered and who mothered the boygoat
How does oxygen woo hydrogen
To birth the snowflake
Founded upon dust
Its objecthood composite
Unique as every object is unique
All is conscious and manifests will
And how much of my own experience do I myself experience
That I might dare to dismiss the experience
Of cousin primate goatboy dog alga animalcule bacteria virus ion or tree
And nature nurturing mother sometimes takes a mood to destroy
And hurricanes make landfall
And plagues sweep unruly to decimate populations
And innumerable snowflakes each a wonder of beauty
Collect and decorate the mighty mountain
Until one slips and loses its place
And avalanche obliterates the town beneath
All phenomena a flux of collection and dissipation
And we invest too in identity
Objectifying ourselves
Subjecting ourselves to that same fallacious definition
That we apply to other objects
That we extend so far and no farther
And within our inviolable perimeter our stout integrity
We are one thing sole solitary complete we say
And we enlist in the regiment of personality
And worse objectify others regardless of consent
But within and upon this conceptual body
In fact an overmuch composite unmasterable
Dwell innumerable organisms malign or amicable as the case may be
And our fatty sheath is constantly pierced by objects
Living seemingly unliving and cosmic
And in fact our multifarious consciousness extends beyond ourselves
And interpenetrates the larger consciousness
Neither oversoul nor undersoul
But simply the shared great soul
The one life within us and abroad
We know not to what extent
As we know not the final digit of pi
For outside and beyond space
Lies the space without extent
That nevertheless interpenetrates
The phenomenal flux
And from moment to moment
We play the part such as the social moment requires
As child parent sensei ephebe healer patient soldier criminal clown
Often several simultaneously
And make our contribution
Less a question of who we are
Nostalgic for some answer in multiple choice
As of playing our part well or badly
In the numerous repertoire