Three pounds of matter in a purse of bone
contain this earth, these skies, their touch and tone,
absorbing more and more minutely all
that’s found beyond the pale of frontal wall.
Inevitably now the eye turns in
to find in neural networks, virtue, sin,
attempting a molecular soul to bare,
to find ourselves where we already are.
Prepare, then, objectivity’s most painful birth,
shut out those skies, these fields, this touching earth,
spread wide the hips of mind and heave and strain
on concentration’s bone ’til muscles tear
and sockets crack and we are born again,
dazed, cognizant, into the narrow pelvis of the skull.