What We Know

by A. Diao Lavina

We roam and speak of inherited neuroses, the illogical lack
Of calculated lives in a universe obsessed with its laws.

Theories overflow and their intersections
We call Truth in wondering voices.

But we still toss coins and consult the I-Ching.
Tides wane and grow.

Trees whimper silently, silently they breathe.
The moon rides its invisible arc

And children smile and point to its dead faces.
We take delicate threads between careful fingers

And in the weaving of the fabric teach one another
Grace, intimacy, fortitude.

We vow each to each the probability of space
And crush with words the walled ends of the universe

Although none of these definitions unmask the fierce
Emotion keen, pungent, stinging.

Language is only imprecise and speculative:
Yet how may we find an equation complete

And liberal enough to allow each adventure,
Each matchless episode, every odd and even day?

Infinity is also the Multiplication Property of Zero,
And in all absolute ways one and one

Make two, separately and wholly.
Precision eludes us. We dream in metaphors

Of love as a universe and the space beyond.
We build monuments to our hopes

That utterance equals existence.
Only by a margin of error, and this uncertain,

Will we find the calculus of the accident
That you love me and I love you,

Approximately as the vacuum of time.
Opiates like these do not mask

What we understand that you and I
Travel the stretch of our lives

As parallel lines, awaiting a chance
Curve of reality and the tug of strange gravity

To meet at last, innocent that we will spend ourselves
Battling the singularity,

Mouthing measureless wishes and incomprehensible desperation.