I had long thought the soul a construction
Of human cultural activity, a tool in the kit,
Like a compass, like God, like language,
But it did puzzle me how the mechanism
Most sprang to life when humans receded.
Two hours without seeing another soul
Was enough for my own internal marionette
To leap to life in the way of all marionettes,
Waked with a jerk of the strings, clattering
Upright in a manner that more suggested
Spontaneous self-assembly than an animal
Stirring. How spiritual I could feel if others
Weren't around to raise and lower my spirits.
Gold rabbitbrush and ochre-tipped green
Gambel oaks, sand-colored dry grasses,
Mother-of-pearl clouds on robin's egg skies,
Unseeable breezes that could be heard
Wandering here and there, half a mile off,
Scents of high-desert autumn on approach,
All of these merely sensory irrelevancies felt
Playful, soulful, at least until a few persons
Joined the scene with their nodding heads,
Voices, observations, and prior relationships.
I began to suspect I had confused distinct
Notions hovering around one fragrant word.
There was the soul of society, indeed
An artifice, a collectively made thing. And
Maybe there could be a soul beyond all this,
That could come only when all this was left.
But the seeming soul of a wordy mammal
Alone with a wordless world was the no soul
To which one could make reference but
Could not place, not be, not keep, not share,
A quick, awkward grace, Cather's happiness,
Dumb enlightenment, any animal's sudden
Contentment, jig danced and lost on the air.
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