the great philosophers are at peace
everything they thought
was true
and now they’re dead
and know it better

you might say bird, tree, rock, flower

you might say sparrow, spruce, agate, clover

in a heightened state of autism
you might watch, and not say
anything at all

somewhere at the core of you
is a whisper: “Don’t interrupt.”
watching and listening feels good
enough

this won’t last forever
not like this

words roll around in your skull
like cat’s eyes, desperate
marbles
shooting for daylight

keep still
in the philosophers’ glass
between

time is a big fat Zero
balding in the desert, holding onto its
beer, remembering what it’s
got trapped in there to re-
member,
the buzz
of a one way street

time presumes to guess
how it will go, because
it stands
on the stilts
of what’s
been
the great philosophers float
on this very breeze, float
on this
very
breeze
as always
a taste, a sniff, a glimpse
of the changeable thing

and fixed in it all,
with eye and tongue
sound, and echo,
they are silent

unresisting.