There is no harm in hitting dirt bottom.
You analyze or memorize what’s known.
There is rock stillness, knowing past the heart.
I think it must be soul that we describe
when we attach a word to what we feel
is true. It doesn’t move, earth caught within
its orbit, where unknowns are measured null
and infinite, to match whatever clue
connects to fact, the elegance of math
that doesn’t lie while telling partial truth.  

You think you know a cat, and so you name
her Pitch. She speaks to you, but only what
you give her: purring for your hand along
her back. You hear the way you know an infant’s
needs. You did not teach her purr—that came
from want fulfilled. Beyond that hunger lies
a purpose we can’t fathom, reason why
we’re here. Beneath the wave, the water’s growl
is tame but power flips us over, sets
the moon in turbulence, because it can.  

Still, I would like to act, to use fake blood
and saline tears. You’d know that when you fall,
a distilled drama rises, recognized
as part reality, without the pain.
That mutant truth is close as anything
we say, connected to the death we fear
to fear. We name it soul, create a realm
of living to infinity, unknown.
We taste the mountain in the sand, the sky
in absent air, the power of a self.