Why What's All The Same

What's all the same? A picnic table with puddles of rain on it? As a porcupine mulling a new smell in the morning forest? What if blossoms of honeysuckle lay withered in the water? What if it shines just so? What if someone you knew a long time ago stops to look down, sees the bland oval of their face shimmering there, ash-colored circles where the eyes go? What if the sound of the river is higher than usual on account of all this rain? What if in the distance a phone rings and rings and goes unanswered by either a machine or a human being? What's next then? Will we have to pull together and pretend that some things happened while others were merely dreams? What things exactly? The spider leg that lay limp and broken between your forefinger and thumb? The sound of the broom as it went back and forth over the pavement despite the fact that the wind only blew more and more dust? What if the crow that flew overhead, so straight you thought it must be in love, with one feather missing from its left wing, was not a symbol of anything but only a crow? What has happened to our ability to read and to glean from what we read some useful information? Has it hidden itself in a cave? Is it stoking a fire and pondering shadows thrown against the far wall? Are we back to Plato? Then where did we begin and why? Yes, that's right - why?