The Trilobites
The horizon is not far,
not on a clear day,
not on the top of Mary’s Peak
or at the bluffs at Cape Blanco,
not anywhere.
The world is flat, at any rate,
the sky empty. We walk about
looking neither up nor down
and still are overwhelmed by
the torrent of information.
I wonder if it would not be so different
from the flatlander’s transcendence
to the third dimension,
to step into the ocean
with eyes that could see.
Humanity, I hear, has always dreamed
of flying. A strange dream.
Better than flying through empty skies, I think,
to swim unblinded in a universe
of penetrable darkness,
with life and death stretched into infinity
in every direction, surrounded by fins
and claws and tentacles, submerged in our own
alienation and the persistent memory
of the things that have seen this world
with eyes that are cold and hard.
