MINUS THE METAPHOR

We can sit around a table on the Sabbath

on the first day of daylight savings

eating Olallieberry Pie and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

for breakfast and debate if there is a god or not

and whether the divine force was here

before the beginning or will arrive just before the end.

We can muse on the existence of intelligent life

elsewhere and why all our efforts to make contact 

go unanswered – and then wonder if

our SETI instruments are just not smart enough 

to receive what’s being sent.

We can make ourselves delusional

pondering the imponderables

by setting query inside of query

as if they were nested matryoshka dolls

or by stacking turtles on top of turtles 

into infinity. We can and, happily, we will 

do this, all of this one fine morning 

and probably with a little pie on our face 

because we must. Because we must 

make meaning. Without it we don’t know 

who we are. Without it we are like the poet

minus the metaphor. Like the heavens

without the stars.