Principles

Repair yawns into disrepair. Sheds,

sway-backed and molting, unclench

into the slump of entropy, escape use.

We measure time with a star that will

destroy Earth in 1.2 billion years.

Others use the moon, that gasp, that crash

repeatedly deferred, yearning to land.

Causation is the only unobserved phenomenon

in which we are encouraged to believe.

If, then, ad infinitum.

We order chaos with its own rough edge,

tear form from incoherence. The logic

was never pure. In an economy of scale,

the heart boggles. The brain

goes slack. No organ can fathom. Smaller items

slip through the net of importance,

the wrong tools become bludgeons.

It’s in the gentle peripheral

that breakables hide. Sidelong, anything

can be handled: the viscosity of glass,

the pancreas, A & ~A. Something keeps us

thumbtacked to existence. When Berkeley wrote,

“to be is to be perceived,” he really meant it.