“Like,”

the kids say now,

over and over,

or click on Facebook—

small affirmations

that can't fully explore

the knitted souls of vehicle and tenor, the glimpsed-forth

shining

of one thing seen

through the presence

of another. In the way

that the self more clearly

understands

where it is now by seeing through the lens of where it came

from.

One person needs another

to see past

the mind, to conceive

what's possible

even to conceive.

One tense needs another: is/was, shake/

shook,

to rattle the insides

of what we think

we think, what we

know we know,

what we don't know

we don't know or can't know. Through Laertes’

foil

we better grasp

the questions of Hamlet.

“The inward service

of the mind and soul

grows wide withal,”

he says, and we enter ourselves fully, not only ourselves.