And we: spectators, always, everywhere, / looking at every-
thing and never from! / It floods us. We arrange it. It decays.
We arrange it again, and we decay.

Shoes clotted with recent mud, legs straining in a single task,
I arrive at the bench where philosophers sit and unravel their
knotty thoughts.

Light-footed birds left a hieroglyphic trail leading from the
"thick now" to where Prometheus scoops up a handful of clay
and, using river water, he shapes the first man. In so doing,
mythologies return us to an instinctual life.

I could have sat there forever. But when voices drifted up the
path, I climbed higher. Rain scoured the mountain's summit,
contrails crisscrossed the sky's "overarching dome."

In the valley below, red-tiled roofs flared in the shadows
of Eucalyptus trees unrolling sheets of bark incised with
a language of signs unforgotten by species not our own.