Here's a poem. Kind of unstructured, free verse type thing--which really goes against my literary gut--but the image came to me in a dream and I didn't want lose it in the time it would take to impose a lot of structured metrics. I'll say one thing for this free verse stuff: comes out a heck of a lot quicker than rhyming iambic pentameter.
Ape v. Mathematician
An Ape and a Mathematician
May each, for their separate purposes,
Look at the stars and find them beautiful.
Which am I when I look at you?
A simple creature
seeing only points of light,
Tracing what patterns I can between them,
Organizing infinity
into comprehensible constellations
And thinking myself,
in what capacity I have to do so,
clever.
Or am I the one obsessed with measuring
With ever greater precision
The astronomical distance between myself
and each phenomenon?
The one who knows with near-certainty
That the distance between himself
and those lights
Will never be crossed in his lifetime
Or likely any.
I, of course, am both and neither.
I am the one who has been to the stars
And has seen their beauty close up
And knows, with visceral, animal certainty
That I will never again see them but from distance.
O, to be either!
To look upon that which must remain removed
And feel only wonder
And not loss.
