Know One and Two

One

Some think trees know each other

As an unborn child knows its mother —

Receptivities to stasis and change

Continually rearrange

The molecules of the forms of mind

As they perpetually unwind.

“Some think” has become all

That’s left of the old universal.

Two

We can’t tell anyone to know,

Don’t even know what knowing is,

Where it comes from, its genesis.

Things we know just come and go.

We can’t force anything to stay,

Especially anything we say.

Everything we know is “as though,”

A nothing become contingent,

Mindlessly intelligent.

There’s no bird smarter than a crow,

Or so it’s said by learned men,

Who can count from one to ten,

But find it hard to explain how

Crows never fly in a straight line.

As if seeking some strict design,

We fly from not wanting to know.