The Myth of Meaning
overcomes itself
Is there ever a moment empty
of what we can see, hear, know?
Is day the meaning of night or night of day?
Whatever follows is no answer
Firewood doesn’t become ash, Dogen tells us
nor winter spring
good questions don’t get answered
in their own terms, if at all
they fall away into unseeing emptiness
the mythical borderland of the known,
the knowable, expected, either/or
where we can glimpse what is moving
us and the world
Meaning doesn’t come next
It is packaging on what just arrived
unexpected as the present moment
immediate, intimate, unquestioned
We back into the blind feel of it
like we sense what we’ve lost or forgotten
now just out of reach
When we buy its myth, it’s included
we’ve all bought myth-meanings
see closets, bookshelves, convictions
The Dog Star 
2 Responses to “The Myth of Meaning”
I really like the idea of meaning as packaging to what is already here(!) …and this killer ending: ” we’ve all bought myth-meanings / see closets, bookshelves, convictions.” As Roethke says, what is there to know? Backing into “blind feeling” with the ineffable always just out of reach, as it should be…in life, and in good poems, like this one.
Thanks, Craig. I’ve been reading R. Panikkar, a theologian, who says of theology: “as with poets and lovers, you have to use courteous language in which you dance around, suggest, run away…say things you don’t intend, mean, understand…”