Is Anything There? Is There a There There?

TALENT SEARCH

The soul lacks talent, being that it lives

In the vast space between.

There is room a-plenty, one would think

To tap dance there,

Learn macrame,

Invent the wheel,

Or pursue a higher degree.

But the soul lacks talent,

Arms, legs, brains,

A high school diploma,

Government funding,

Rope,

And tap shoes.

I hammer on the door

Of the space between this electron and that one

To no avail.

I’d like to tell the soul a thing or two,

About what it’s like here in the macroverse,

And if I had a battering ram,

A wrecking ball,

A bullhorn,

To penetrate the space between this and that,

Here and there,

I’d use them all.

But the soul lacks ears;

Either it’s not listening,

Or it can’t hear a thing I say.

**************************

I wrote this poem four years ago, and I have not the foggiest notion what I was on about. Okay, in the debate between believers in an immortal soul and disbelievers in same, I fall into the former camp. Another belief, that supernatural events may be real, and that they may in fact be natural, and just beyond our normal perception, may have made it inevitable that I would position my immortal soul in the vast space between atomic and subatomic particles. Were I writing the poem now, I would probably tuck my soul into one of those extra dimensions string theory describes.

What I don’t get, what I cannot recall, is why I say that the soul has no talent. I don’t argue with that assertion; I only wonder why I would bother to bring up the subject.

In the poem, I seem a bit annoyed at my soul, implying it’s a do-nothing, mindless blob, unaffected by the injuries and wrongs that plague the Big Body representing it here on Earth. Fair enough. And maybe I just want some feedback, from the realms I cannot reach. Fair enough as well.

Still, it’s not talking.