Substantial Planes by A.R. Ammons

1.
Why do I write, and why do I read? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

2.
Wonderment, I tell myself earlier this year, in my journal. Every time I arrive at a page, I bring with me questions. Every time I turn to the next, I leave with more.

3.
What does it mean to be kind?

4.
There’s a lot of work to be done. I could see the road a little bit now: where I have to go, what I have to do. Really it’s more like a shadow of an arrow, saying, There. Forward. But the path is there.

Substantial Planes
A.R. Ammons

It doesn’t
matter

to me
if

poems mean
nothing:

there’s no
floor

to the
universe

and yet
one

walks the
floor.

—

This is from The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons, published by W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.

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