the enso

"The Lighthouse at Verona Beach" by marlowe

the poem

There is nothing before
there is one. We are taught
systems, each starting with zero,
ordering our lives in straight lines
that never intersect, parallel possibilities
we learn to design and then build.
We have read the ancient texts,
perhaps even tread the cobbled stones
paved by Roman armies, meandered
between Corinthian columns, or climbed
the Mayan pyramids, hoping each echoing step
brought us closer to our origins, closer
to a divinity we could not define
via mathematics. We push forward
like arrows, like trains whose brakes have failed.
As we outlined our borders, coloring
inside the lines, squares within squares
like nested dolls, taming
ourselves in our wild world, we erected
lighthouses on the shoreline
just in case we needed to know where
the beckoning waves ended.