This Is Not About You

Go and look at the waves
See how they crash on the shore
Again and again and again
No newspaper reports them
You saw them with your own eyes
No billionaire chose for you to see them
You went of your own accord
No authority gave you permission
You did that yourself
But this isn't about you
It's about the waves
And how they do what they do
Without the slightest human intervention
And it's about more than the waves
It's about the dripping in limestone caves
It's about the creatures in the Mariana Trench
It's about the formation of rain drops at two and a half thousand feet
And how none of them depend on humans
They do not require photographers in order to exist
No commissioning editor controls their existence
They just are
And they just do
Whether you know it or not
And that's not just true on Earth
But in the great red spot on Jupiter
And the soft gyres of the atmosphere of Neptune
And in the nuclear fusion of the sun
And in the elliptical paths of comets
And in the swallowed light of black holes
And in the slow but inexorable expansion of the universe
None of it is about humans
None of it is about you
None of it cares about you or has the capacity to do so
It has been happening
It is happening
And it will go on happening
Whether you know it or not
Whether it's in a big book of high resolution photographs or not
Whether any scientist anywhere has observed it or ever will
And this is true of almost the entire universe
Ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine percent of it
Everything except for the tiny lantern of cognition here on Earth
A theatre in which every audience member also sits upon the stage
Almost everything that has happened, is happening and will happen
Does so wholly one hundred percent regardless of humans or whatever they happen to think
And the crashing waves on the beach
Are just the beginning of a thread
That begins here
And wraps all the way around the universe
And you can go
And look at them
And remember
This is not about you
None of this is about you

Flower Rocket

You can listen to me reading this poem here.

A rocket went up
Into the sky today,
And from its thrusters
There came
A great unbroken stream
Of potpourri,
And inside the rocket,
Every room
And every bay
And every locker
Was full of flowers:
Red ones,
Blue ones,
Flowers whose petals
Were shaped like bottles,
Flowers whose odours
Evoked memories
Of grandmothers.
Flying the rocket
Were flower-people in uniforms
With big flower-shaped heads,
And the two lieutenant flowers
Saluted to the captain flower
And smiled,
And the captain flower
Saluted back
And smiled,
And the rocket went up and up
And around and around.
And when it reached
Its apogee,
One of the lieutenant flowers
Wrote down
Their exact distance
From the directrix:
An imaginary line
Above their heads
That went out into space
And touched the edges
Of the universe.
And the lieutenant flowers
And the captain flower
All looked at each other,
And they smiled.
And then the rocket
began to fall,
And the potpourri
That came streaming
From its thrusters
Now sprayed upwards
Like the water sprinkler
In Piccadilly Gardens.
And it continued
To fall;
It plunged,
It plummeted,
It dropped like
A plump peach.
And at twelve minutes
Past four
On Tuesday, the 23rd
Of May,
One hour
And thirty-seven minutes
After it was launched,
It entered the waters
Of the Pacific Ocean
At Point Nemo.
But now,
Instead of falling,
It was passed from palm
To palm
By the great watery hands
That lie in the ocean,
And wait
For the signal
To applaud.
The ship tumbled
And spun,
And bubbles went up
To the surface
As it sank.
Finally,
Its nose hit
The bottom
Of the Ocean
And slowly,
As though bruised,
It lowered itself
And lay down
On the Ocean bed.
All the flowers
Were dead.
The flower-people had taken
Revolvers
Out of their holsters
And blown their heads off
Ten minutes previously.
And when the metal
Of the rocket
was no longer
Too hot,
Fish would come up
And look through the windows
And mouth words
That are not
In any dictionary
And will never be
Spoken.