Not in the complacency that radio-telescopes enhance,
But in enabling cross-fertilization between sentient beings
And objects curiously pre-fitted to human intellectual
And emotional faculties. For I discover in a green straggle
A unique disclosure of the despised, primal thing of beauty
That I contemplate, which personalizes my cosmic relationship.
Some desire to be out of this world, drugged or founding another:
My ego covets and selects impressions of being in the world,
Which sum to an experience of a universe uniquely Georgian.
Science does not sort and interpret for me what shall comprise
My unique experience of the cosmos, I do. My free spirit does.
It is my thoughts, and yours, that create the universe around us
And from our productive and meaningful encounter with otherness
We not only approach the truth, but confirm that the encounter
Is a truth in itself. The botanist’s impressions
Of Sphagnum auriculatum - provided that they are accurate -
Are more truthful than a tick on a recording card could ever be.
The corollary to Descartes’s ‘I think, therefore I am’
Is ‘I do not think, therefore I am not’: if thinking about life,
Its many-sidedness, its contrariness and contradictions, its mystery,
Is my only awareness that I am living at all,
Then how many tickers don’t even know they are born?
How many counters have an interest in keeping them that way?
5. Could I be wrong to label this ‘Sphagnum auriculatum’?
I should take it to the Prof. for a second opinion. But from whom
Should I seek a second opinion about my life? Who is more qualified
That I to give it? But if I am unavailable to comment, I cannot ask
Colleagues, ‘Have you seen me?’ If they knew me well, they might ask
‘Would that be Athenian George? Nietzschean George? George the Red?