Making Sense

Making Sense

Suppose we’d been given no senses,
or only one. Suppose we could only see.

Would we resist time, frightened to see
nothing one day and then for forever.

How attached would we be to the surface
of experience, the colors, the faces,

this life papered in shapes. Watching
the pieces go would excite us, distance

and depth made out of brightness
and also absence. The senses allow

us to structure being around the hour
and the day. Our mind is aware

of the truth: that we invented the word
forever knowing that it is a myth.

That we will not always be here, that
here will not always be here.

That humans need time, and the senses
with which to paddle through it

and navigate, and to get lost in the water’s
response as we push and kick.