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BIOSOPHY, AN OPTIMIST'S MANIFESTO
The purpose of life is life itself-and when we have done our share
inwardly, the outer things will follow of themselves.
Goethe, letter to Heinrich Meyer, August 8, 1792
Say it's naive, this belief
in more than Darwin's old manifesto,
combat, the wolf who attacks by instinct,
the struggle of a viper cornering
his prey, our being defined by this way
of knowing the earth. What of that
other possibility, evening,
when our whole body is one sense,
the sky spreading out its liberation
in great splashes of phosphorous,
of the bible, of the prophets,
of the oldest poems, the stony shore
of the pond, pebbles underfoot sounding
like a string quartet by Beethoven
in my head, this unabashed
enthusiasm in the capricious loops
and detours we take, eating wild berries,
their succulence a thirst
for the sky with its mackerel-colored clouds,
lit from within, the city
wavering in the distance like the cosmos,
for barn swallows moving in and out
of our path, in the quiet, love,
where this closeness, this nonsense
takes hold: like joy. These words
a shoreline where we can stand.
Slender ribbons of grass at our shoes
cleanse us, so we imagine.
We're like one of those poems
that doesn't know where it's going,
like the hummingbird in our garden
searching for the showiest hibiscus
to slake its hunger. Tired, we walk
through damp grass, a country we explore.
We're drawn to this circle of intimacy,
for such momentary peace the body
still holds true. We breathe
in its grace, the night-blooming flowers
another way of knowing.