PARADOX

PARADOX

where are they
Professor Fermi

why are they hiding
why do they
not show themselves

do
they even exist?

no sign of those horrors
beauties
     of our cosmic imagination
radically divergent evolution

our astonishingly familiar
mandibled nemeses and
arch-enemies

our tentacled lovers
and extraterrestrial friends

not a hint of so much
as a big-brained tadpole out there

billions of years for them
to be born, build and expand,
announce themselves

and yet
      they seem
to have lost the plot

have not read the template
realized how much we need
to find them
(or them
      to find us)
to mirror
   all that is alien, otherworldly,
in the species itself

this
     ape creature that somehow
seems determined to
alienate itself from
planet
    galaxy, Universe

perfecting the expression
of all that
   refusing to be integrated
is
   divided, disjointed,
anomalous
essence of
oddness whetever
it tell itself

as it all is
   everything that got seeded
throughout trillions
of galaxies

too limited in range
narrow in focus
parochial in
perspective

to stick its head out
its hole
     show us

best and
         its worst

celebrate all
    that is other, thereby

all that is self