Birdshit On A Boulder

Birdshit on a boulder is 

as real as anything can be.

Life in the moment is memory,

working, making existence real.

Nothing can be known outside it, even birdshit.

Even pitch requires time, enough for a few vibrations.

Otherwise, sound is not; nor vision. It all takes time. 

Nothing exists without memory, applying itself 

to what has passed, birdshit,

allowing for thought, existence. 

And though it matters naught to anything but thought, 

it feels as true as reality is— as birdshit on a boulder.

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This idea, of the salience of memory to existence, is not original to me but stems from reading Iain McGilchrist’s The Master And His Emissary. However, it reminds me of another poem I wrote in 2020 on the same idea, also not original to me, except as poem.

Time Is Fat

I have read that, lately, in modern Physics,

the Present is thought of as being thick,

no longer a knife-edge between Past and Future,

but thick: a point in Time no longer a point,

an instant not an instant, but agreeably plump.

Who wouldn't prefer that time be plump?

And it's probably mathematically true.

Hallelujah. Time is fat.

And that's how it feels to me Today.

I am getting on, pretty much as I was

and will be, little good to anyone but myself,

but if not exactly glad, and proud of what I do,

less mad at it too, which is better for the circulation.

And if it were not for Today's being fat,

Tomorrow might fall on me like the great guns

of the First World War, ourselves in a ditch,

unable to deal with it.

May Mankind Herself do better,

and do it Today, while we still have Time,

dear, plump, agreeable Time.