how electrons
don't get dirty
no matter how hard
or fast they go
careening around—
how photons almost never
have plans
for the future—
how bosons don't have
bad memories, and quarks
don't get scars?
Nevertheless,
here we sit anyhow,
under the same old stars,
unwilling
to make sense of
what can't be accounted for,
without ever realizing
what poverty
that brings.
It's as if, all our lives,
we have looked
without seeing
that each part
individually
was perfectly sufficient—
but, left to its
own devices, never
meant anything.
