Even Those Without Sense At All. Poem by RIC BASTASA

if mother did not
weave
she would have
died an earlier death, and
if papa did not fish he would
have been swallowed by the
sea at an earlier date, and
here you are, if you did not
write, whatever, wherever,
you would not have reached
this moment, and so this
explains it,
not a thousand paper cranes
not an origami,
it is a thousand words,
plumbing themselves
in syllabic chains,
like the way you chain
yourself to a pillar
so that the wind, the
surge, the sea shall not
take you,
and so it is this: to live
one must continue to struggle
to keep life
one must stick to it like a
leech,
one must weave or one must fish,
or one must continue to say
something, even those without
sense at all.