Without Exaggeration
as they would themselves if they needed to
our seeing is re-inventing what doesn’t need to be
yet allows it. Describing is another revision.
We try to stick with what’s already there,
without exaggeration but it keeps moving,
changing, and it would be hard to tell
if the changes were theirs or ours.
Going both bigger and smaller like raindrops,
leaves of grass, each with their cosmic and subatomic links,
colors shifting more intense or less, approaching or distancing
in or out of time, hardening or softening.
It’s hard not to exaggerate what’s already huge,
without borders only horizons
suggesting infinity to us, and we’re so fond of infinity
the current favored substitute for substance
in our thought-world where nothing persists unchanging.
Even abstractions, which are historical.
The sea is a favorite, visibly moving, washing itself
of itself as it just was. Watching it, we feel ourselves
doing as it is doing, abandoning and re-inventing selves
in a flow without limits, only current horizons.
The Dog Star 
2 Responses to “Without Exaggeration”
“ Describing is another revision”This is the key insight and argument, for me. It isn’t something poets normally think about.
We can barely see the world and its objects as they are until we can see ourselves as we are, whole. Until then, we’re busy with partial perspectives that appeal to us, largely habitual.