Big and Small

The world is so large a place
-- It was not well expressed by the poet who said,
"It is hard to see but think of a sea" --
Or perhaps it was, because everything in it
Is different than we think,
And yet we think of it the same.

There are very small things: I could squint
Trying to turn a screw on my glasses, pick
At the tiny pimples on my face, or maybe --
But do we have a name for these parts? --
Something has fallen into the drain
And needs be fished out (a minnow!)
Or there is a splinter
Lodged under sheets of skin
That you'll have to dig up
With pliers.

I just mean that what philosophers call
Medium-sized objects, we know
All about those, for instance if you pour
Cereal into a bowl and bring it to your mouth
With a spoon or there is something
A cup of coffee on the counter you reach for
With a grasping hand (all these words:
All these useful words!).

The argument continues: but everything large
Is made from what is small, and what is small
From what is smaller (see how the words
Grow tinier and more abstract,
Like the outermost branches of a plant
Beginning to tremble in the thinness of the air)...

But what is small is so different from what is large!

And what is large is so different from what is small:
Climates are flowing like the tides,
The globe is warming, the sun will be burning
Come summer, from millions of individuals producing
Mountains of individual things -- waste: societies,
Wars (Tom shooting at Fred firing
At Bill...), science (the research results of
How many professors? Just take the journals,
Article upon article waiting for synthesis --
Or is it better to compare the production of DNA?
Collating, checking, synthesizing,
Reforming -- and how many of these
Make up a body? But none of them are
That body)

But finally one tiny planet drifting
In this immensity of drifting stars...

How tiny large is large tiny!
What tiny things we are:
We who make everything large.