How to Know Two

--John Blair

 

We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because

one and one are two. ​We are finding that we must learn a

great deal more about 'and'.

~Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

  

Look around, brother;

there is no stranger who is

stranger than you, no

 

familiar who’s more

familiar.  The cup’s the hole

as much as the clay,

 

the held as much as

the holding.  Your hands, they hum

like a spear of grass

 

teeth-buzzing against

your sweet contingency, tone

against silence, hard

 

against tone, hymn-sung

and holy in the split-tongue

garden of our blue

 

undecideds.

Wherever there is sky there

is something rising,

 

something falling. That’s

all the comfort you need, all

the comfort you get.