! Mind That Mind! Poem by Michael Shepherd

Boundless… yet, it can formulate
these things called words…
to help itself and us; to call
to our imagination, bounds,
and boundlessness, in thought…

out of sleep and dream, leaps
to our assistance as a faithful hound
eager for the hunt; in a puckish moment
offers us the world.. all that is
and all that's not (and it’s
particularly strong on what is not…)

is it greater, then,
than its Creator? No, that can not be;
but greater than our image of
the Creator – ah! now there's the rub…

what is its shape, this shapeless thing?
as regular as a sphere – but of a geometry
beyond all spheres; its co-ordinates
beyond whatever is beyond…

yet almost as if it had (its centre
everywhere, its circumference just nowhere…)
imagined poles, joined yet held apart
by imaginary axis – so that it can hold
all opposites, all paradoxes;

so as you speak one thing, its opposite
like shadow, like uninvited echo,
haunts it as familiar ghost…
see it, hear it, and
you’ll win a reputation for broad-mindedness
or scholarly indecisiveness…you will walk
with blissful universality..

this glorious facility, new-born to us every moment,
to be ecstatic in our boundlessness…
and all this, before
we’ve even rolled and staggered out of bed…