Ornament (2021)

Where do we come from, and where are we going?
In this age, we are beginning — slowly, tentatively —
to glimpse the outlines of that question.
Perhaps somewhere in the universe
there once lived beings who wondered as we do now,
thinking and existing in much the same way.
There is meaning, I believe,
in pausing to contemplate what may well be meaningless.

I am sometimes asked:
“What should someone like me do — someone who has nothing?”
Each time, I offer a similar reply:
“If you feel you have nothing,
then try living in such a way
that you keep searching for what may still be there.”

Even if, in the end, genes or fate
were to hold sway over everything,
the act of taking a single step forward
is still, unmistakably, an expression of one’s own will.