maybe in poetry

Look up into the sky tonight and pick a star.
Any star.
Look up in the sky and focus on that distant point.
That is what our sun looks like to someone out there circling that light.
We are that small.
We are that fragile.
We are that finite.

Find another point of light.
One that's moving this time.
Tell me.
Is that a meteor or a firefly? Are you sure?
Why are you so sure?
How are you so sure?
You can only differentiate a lightning bug from a shooting star
by the grace of thousands of years of accumulated wisdom. Knowledge collected and analyzed and categoried
then passed down generation after generation
surviving the idea of death by
being written down for posterity
by being spoken from a teacher to a learner.
We are not born knowing
that the flashes in the sky are little rocks
burning up as they descend from outer space
or that they're any different from little glowbugs
that we might have once thought the spirits of our dead.
We weren't born knowing these things.
We did not evolve into our knowledge.
The hardware of our bodies and our minds
are no different than they were when we first stopped hunting and gathering
and started growing culture in one fixed place.
Our bodies are no different
what differs is the transmission of accumulated knowledge
culture art science and reason
being transmitted down through the ages
surviving any one searcher's death
it is not magic
but it is a miracle
The real kind of miracle.

Knowledge,
no,
Memory infects us and we become carriers.
Even when asymptomatic, we are still its vectors.
The incubation period of knowledge is unsure
and its latency ends instantaneously.
We are diseased with knowledge.
We are lousy with knowledge.
It will go on even after us.
As will the stars
and the comets
and the fireflies if we're lucky.

Look, look at a speck in the noonday light.
Is that a mote of dust? Is that a planet?
Is that a cell flaked off your skin?
In the end, We are dandelion seeds on the wind. Our heads gone wispy in the hopes
the just-right gust
could carry us away to be born anew.
But we don't get to know.
Not now, not yet.
Not no, not yes.
We have to find out later I guess.
But maybe is the answer that leaves the door open for hope.

Look at yourself in the mirror.
In the light.
And give yourself that answer, "maybe".
Not the fascist spoiled-surprise of "yes"
and not the fatal blow of "no"
but rather look yourself in the eye
and say "maybe".

Look at a speck
look at a seed
look at someone else's distant sun
look at yourself.
There could be new life just coming awake there yet.
Not no or yet
but maybe.