A Few Things Are Real Though Poem by Dennis Ryan

February 10,2006; April 3,2012; revised Saturday morning,
March 29,2014 at 11: 42 a.m.

"the wild deer startle, and stare out"
- George Oppen, "Psalm"

Living is never real enough.
We are needy, complex,
invent ethics to live by-
this nation, that god, these heroes
rising up into which heavens?
Likewise, all the invented terms
rise up in whirlwinds of rhetoric,
the misnomers fluid and interchangeable,
all the convincing terms finally unconvincing
despite our strongest wants and needs.
You can be seduced by an idea,
by certain combinations of words,
and you can believe any or all of them-
as you please—but believing won't make
them so, or you any worthier.A few things
are real though: the grass, the trees, the sunlight-
your eyes, mine, the cells of which we are composed.
These few things sustain us.We breath the air;
blood circulates in our veins; we respond to
one another; we are, and are happy for awhile.