"larksmith"

Sometimes
I become almost painfully aware
that I'm much too much aware
of trivialities, but then

even as I do, some fruitful almost
ludicrously abstruse connection will spring

between the triviality I was working on noticing
and some huge, cosmically comically life-governing fact
I'd always lived peacefully with,
or without, blissfully oblivious, and I am

consoled not more than distracted by this
- how do other people notice such things?
- or, how do they not?
- Until the next.

Anyway I couldn't really change, because
it isn't really like that.
Something like,
surely,
but something isn't me. How many ways
I like to think of myself
aren't really true?

Surely I'm aware I'm not really
so oblivious as I like to observe.
I exaggerate the extent

from the surprise, every time
it hits me yet again, yes

again.

I put it in words others wouldn't
(I've scarcely heard anyone rhapsodize
their density or inattention) and the effect

of well-disposition over something
I don't control cheers me. I realize
or decide, I like this thing about me.

It's an important fact of why I am this way. Then
heartened and boldened, I lean
a little into it

and stalk forward into life, to see
what I will catch in this light. Except

it isn't an important fact. It's some kind

of triviality, isn't it? And to go forth
boldly in it, living as if
significance were birdsong
and who knows what else,

vanishing back into the jungle
of insatiable discovery (as if!)

- it's some kind of stunt, isn't it?
I love such stunts! But we must honestly admit
that whatever they teach us isn't much. Honestly
or dishonestly. It's faint and small,
and - apart from the consequences
of our embrace, reckless and breathtaking

- inconsequential