1 Before It Dawns

by Eric Chaet

We don’t choose mother or father,
or what preoccupies them,
or with whom they interact—
maybe brothers, sisters,
uncles, aunts—or how;
where the water comes from, food,
where & how the wastes flow;
we don’t design the shelter or language—
money’s a mystery,
who has the right to commit violence,
to imprison,
who is saying what’s so,
& who’s cleverly lying,
or mistaken, but confident that they’re right;
whether all our cells & organs are healthy,
if there are medicines for what ails us;
the plants & animals around us—
trees, grass, lilac, mushroom, raspberry, poppy, rose,
cattle, hogs, fish, cats, dogs, birds, rodents,
flying & crawling bugs, micro-organisms we can’t see,
in foods, air, fluids, one another, ourselves;
the products of others—wheels, buttons, gasoline, honey,
religion, war, instant coffee, law, lamps, saxophones.

We didn’t create the state or its history,
or the other states or their histories,
the Sahara, Mississippi, Alps, Pacific,
or Earth or the other planets, moons, asteroids,
comets, or the Sun, or other stars,
Milky Way, or other blooming or decaying galaxies.

We have to be as healthy as possible,
& thrive in the midst of all kinds
of opportunity, injustice, & misunderstanding,
& useful & toxic traditions;
& before we know what we’re doing,
we develop useful, & also toxic habits.

There’s a lot of work to do—
& some of the most useful work,
others try to convince us is just fooling around,
& some of what is really just fooling around,
wasting irreplaceable time!
others congratulate us for doing, give us prizes—
or we do in spite of others’ laughter, anger, indignation,
persisting in it, proudly, for years, before it dawns on us!

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Picture: Monet