98. Without the Provision of Advice

Not in the least
or in fractions thereof
and whatever exceeds
what needs to be
less than it appears
before you to be

in a manner of speaking
such that you might use
when speaking to
your superiors who may be
less than what you
imagine them to be

in the same way that
your sense of a person
may be more (or maybe less)
than what you perceive
following the simple facts
of looking and listening

the inner sense of a thing
(as in a geode’s unexpected
toothiness and the color
unlike its exterior which conceals)
being always different
from that that you see

or hear
as a bird whistles to the world
as you whistle a song or
and and the difference in
that or between those
and what a whistle might mean

so you might whittle
a stick into an implement and
implement it into the world
wreaking some simple havoc
against maybe a colony of ants
unfamiliar with the weapons of man

or you might intend an action
so thoroughly that the intent
seems the absolute equivalent to
the act itself and there is
no curtain between the two
you do not pause for applause

or respite but
continue as if your world of thought
is your world of flesh and the breath
you use to speak yourself out
into this tiny globe of life
your simple evidentiary act

the act of proving yourself
extant to the degree you can prove it
a body in buoyant space that
moves as if through air
through air
to catch up with the words

you have just sent out into it
finding yourself upon that hearing
to be neither the intellect
you had hoped to be nor the buffoon
you had feared you were
because each of us is a fraction

of a falsehood
a fraction of simple verity in graceful arcing
movement through
the expected motions of a life
so that you might grow into a man
and do manly things such as

living your life with respect for others
and so that you might be
the man you wanted to be
better than your father
who tried without vigor to make
himself whatever else I might

need to be but
you have your own way now
and your mother knows it
telling me so repeating herself
as she does over her weeks
of thinking about you

and what you are
and are about to become and she
is more surprised and humbled
by your inevitable coming-of-age
than she is that your sister
is marrying five weeks later

and changing her world
into something you won’t
change your world into for years now
sometime in the future when
we will no longer be
the people we are now.