What Is Alien?

By degrees, as always, by waves,
By continuous gradations
Of small discontinuities,

We extend from an awareness
That we are, that there is other,
And that there are many others—

Out as far as we can extend
Our personal or prosthetic
Embodied experiences

From that fluttering awareness,
The sometimes panicked sense of self
On which a world is centering—

Identity. In here. Out there—
Alien. The farthest extreme
We peer into as a mirror,

And, depending on our stories,
Who we have told ourselves we are,
See Void, Fate, or the Face of God.

Identity. Out there—in here.
Having flown this kite string across
Vast canyons of experience,

We feel secure as spiderlings
Sailing breezes, catching branches.
We weave whatever webs we weave.

And then, within our little worlds,
Our tense but sturdy gossamer
Havens, we sense the alien,

Twitching, in us, we aliens,
Pure awarenesses that depend
On narratives to anchor them,

Experiences of bodies
That have no distinct existence,
These myriad lives blended in,

These constellations of fictions,
Microbia, social systems,
Memories that never extend

Back to the very beginning
And that all vanish by the end,
Leaving only the alien.