Without Instruments

All that exists we imagine,

the great circle of the earth tilted

on magnetic lines,

minute organisms that dip and bob 

in a glass of water-

all either too large or too small 

to examine without instruments. Our fingers

can’t peel back mountains 

to extract the molten  peach pit

at the core nor charm bacteria 

into a snake dance with the songs they drum.

We imagine 

that we move along parallels,

tropics that never converge,

each believing

in its own symbolic power to inscribe

the surface of the earth with its existence.

We imagine

that we wind like thread around a spool,

strands of singularity, each

its own color and texture.

We imagine that it matters

what we think,

what we do,

what we say. We believe in ourselves

like geography, like science,

something written in a book--

too large

            too small.