wombs miraculously opened, just
the slow steady play, inning by inning
of a disciplined defense
We wait for the waking of Brahma
to stir against whatever the neighbors bang on
to shake off the worlds that passed
themselves for dreams, to stumble in his midnight
naked for the bedside yarrow stalks
and, later, a change of linens
We won’t deny the divination or a need
for insufficient language
to suggest or speculate on a special
use of the ordinary one
We shouldn’t deny that somewhere
there’s a place where theories can exist
without the burden of prediction
And a realm, at least, where the statistics
we’re amassing are more
than trivia, more than pink streaks
on a stick you pissed on,
more than our need to know the meaning
of what changes—Thunder over Water, Earth over Wind—
that stain, that spotless stain