Meditation on Matter
Doesn’t it matter that you have existed all of your life?

All my life I’ve been matter. Big news, right? This coffee,
still too hot to drink. The music—tuneful disruption

of the ether, lyric, maybe apocryphal, not at all apocalyptic.
Sticky pine cone, snake-tangle of cords, paperbacks titled

American Earth, Derrida and Negative Theology, and My Brother
Is Getting Arrested Again: matter,matter, matter. It all

matters, or so I must believe. But how to reckon, sort,
articulate? When I say None of this is true, mark A or B.

When I say Ready, steady, get in your stance, but don’t
jump the gun. Who can say this matters, this does not,

yellow buses wait for their children and the sun has broken
loose again and liquid guitar runs shiver and vanish

like wind in poplars, sun on the skitter pond, swifts banking
and swooping through their high neighborhoods, all this

matter and all so luscious, heaped and sorted and tinkered
into shape and form and sound, boys and girls on the sidewalk

with bookbags and trumpets, school over and the cookie jar full.