What Shall I Do? Poem by Brian Taylor

There’s a lot to be said for a balanced world,
stable and well-fenced-in,
that plays early that prays late
and industriously fills the within.

This world’s a strange place to find one another,
with alien flesh labelled father and mother.
Flesh is just dust
in a clearing of air,
and air a flicker of light-waves out there.

Yet the masses still form
and the movements take place.
Two faces stare blankly back from the glass,
that of a mind and that of a mask.

So let us watch shapes,
shapes and their lovers,
praise them and give them their due
and beg them, discreetly, to let us in too.

There is no molecule but strives to be the whole
(or, if it can’t encompass that, a soul) .
They slide together each to each
like spider crabs to scavenge a whole beach
and sucking each its tremor from the rest
contrive to make their own illusion best;
so each to each binds close behind their targes.

Swa priketh hem nature in hir corages.