Does Philosophy Matter

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it’s high summer
wild green thrusts itself
against the bounds
of clipped lawns

Huns of sumac
massed at a farm’s edge
surge toward logical
rows of beets and
well-reasoned
ranks of peppers
ignoring the protocol
of invitation under
the wingspread
of a hawk clueless
about the theological
knots of Aquinas

—a hawk who can’t imagine
the ontological argument,
who just wheels like
Gump’s feather rising
and falling on whims
of wind scanning for lunch
without thinking I think,
therefore I am, being
without the anguish of Hamlet’s
big question; someone whose
knowledge is written in cells

—a bird whose understanding
is unscorched by the burning of books
unscathed by the thoughts of the dead,
the ideologies of idiots,
the desperation to make sense
of what cannot be said

— someone snared nevertheless
in the terminal webs
of bi-pedal thinkers who
plumb and mine the shadows
in their heads
.

by Jim Culleny
8/5/11