Incarnations of Environment

That pesky infinity problem.
As above, so below. As for math,
So for genetics, so for ideas.

Our names are so much more powerful
Than we will ever be—they allow
Us to conceive thoughts we’ll never see,

Nuns assisting at delivery
Who whisk our offspring away from us
Without one touch. God, infinity—

Ideas names, also our Monsignors
With nasty habits, have made in us,
Given up now to orphanages

Or perhaps to better families,
More deserving than our human minds.
Maybe angels raised infinity

Since God, their first adoptee, needed
A sibling, unreachable as He.
Maybe. I’m no intuitionist—

I haven’t the necessary skills
To make the magical numbers dance—
But I take the point. Infinity

Has no part in experience,
However much we dwell on the loss
Of thoughts we can only imagine,

Run off, far away from us, hiding
In the black cloaks of names we gave them
Before names whisked them away from us.

Infinity—so hard to function
Without the hope of understanding
That which we can never grasp. We say,

We trust, it’s still out there, far away,
Whole as our other poor lost bastards,
God, of course, but also stillness, ghosts,

Eternity. No, never forget eternity,
That one wail we heard before the word
Whisked him or her out the swinging doors.

Maybe infinity’s successful,
Maybe grown cosmic entirety,
Environment incarnating us,

Including our names and our systems
For conceiving ideas lost to us,
Exposed until the hunters find them.