Aristotle at my fingertips,
not locked in soliloquies I may perform,
but heard from an Oxford don I have
in my pocket,
as I lean into each lesson and trudge
up and down my morning
constitutional,
where the firebreak meets
chaparral alive with cottontail
this morning, when I almost said, "it's too hot."

C'mon, walk a mile with me… like
on the road to Emmaus, but Christ, no;
this character,
a soldier in me, about to salt out, bids me,
walk a mile, "not two, one
does the trick."
The thought comes
as a dare from the Ralston Purina guy,
and I stepped onto my trail.
I dare think Aristotle's thoughts after Plato's,
thinking
I could have known this when I was younger,
but not to this degree,

if I had not dropped out, and never knew,
by rote,
to pass a test, that
"All men by nature desire to know."
This is
Curiosity, right? I suspect it is a gift.

The joy we find in sensation, proof
offered the gainsayer,
I say again, that which is good for nothing
never
never
naturally exists, so
what tool forms an eye to notice that…

see, through the window
of my poetic-pathetic e-thoughtic soul
a feathery
family of phoebe birds, flits by,
if that is the proper name
{Tufted-Titmouse, my AI replies},
tails reflecting a smokey blue hue,
they swoop and flutter past;
I see
in a non-imaged flashpast pattern
from a time in the summer of 1969…

Disneyfied trails
from Cinderella's dressing room
scene, not seen, but reminded of seeing,
the pattern, in this phantomind dance,
being witnessed now, as
this old soldier once saw it
performed by bluer birds than these…

Time skipper
shifts to another bubble intersecting mine
and

I hear a worried neighbor fret about the fire.
I almost say,
"One of the benefits of being
backedup to the cloud,

nothing to lose."

But I remember, she collects purses and shoes.