Is the day sentient? Can it be?
This week’s poem is a prose poem, and one which is definitely more to the lyrical poem side of its heritage than the narrative prose side of the family. The idea it comes from is philosophical. What is the limit of sentience?
The definition of sentient comes from the Latin word for feeling, sentire. It doesn’t necessarily mean intelligent. It means able to sense, feel, respond to that which is sensed. Don’t confuse sentient with sapient, which means wise.
So people, animals, even simple creatures that respond to light are sentient. Plants respond to their environment, so can be considered sentient, though some people argue against that.
But let’s say you don’t draw the line at plants. What is the limit of sentience? Bacteria? Viruses? They’re not very intelligent, certainly not sapient, but they do respond to stimulus in the environment.
If a tree is sentient, what about a forest, as a whole? What about a mountain? A cloud? Daylight?
Personally, I find it hard to get past the plant kingdom. Once we reach the rocks, clouds and other landforms, weather phenomena, radiation…I stop being able to believe they are sentient.
But what if I’m wrong? What if the day were sentient? What would it’s experience look like? Would it both sentient and sapient? This is a poem that tackles that question.
The Sentient Day
1
You are an alpaca, a llama, a vicuña. A little goat prized for your hair. You are bundled up from one creature to the next and pressed together tightly and swept away. By the sea. In the night. Which is a valley. Up from which all things rise.
2
It is one just like all the other marbles in which a world has been pressed. In which everything unbearably precious has been compressed. Impressed. Impressive. In which that which cannot be contained is simultaneously contained and held in the palm of tiny hand. There is a description. And another. Each is unlike and interchangeable. So many pieces and parts pasted together wrongly yet collaging the day. Wrong size shoe on wrong size hand. Cubism run wildly, pounding its head-foot-nose on the door until it finally makes itself understood.
3
Why so long, my darling? Why take such time to tell what is simple as the sunbeam? Look at all the tiny motes dancing. And then the tinier ones. And tinny. And tinnier. There is always something smaller than what you imagine, and you need take no time to tell of it. It. There. There it is.
4
Crossing the jungle on foot, shoes rotted out, rags wrapping the feet. This too was a scout’s expected future. Transecting a continent. Risking the leeches. Isn’t that the every-dailiness of it?
If you enjoyed The Sentient Day
I mentioned prose poems last week, and you can find more about them in that post.
You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.
Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.