Poem: Once They Thought The Soul Might Be

Once They Thought The Soul Might Be

in the spleen or liver or kidney
or a part might be there,
a part in the ventricles, the atria,
in the blood those chambers pump.
It changed, of course,
when these became interchangeable,
transplantation moved the soul
into the head, the mind, the place
from which the world is seen and heard
and where thought rests.  It is cruel,
saying it is sight or sound that matter.
Soups should not need to know the world
by any one route, should not be thought
to need anything, any one kind of experience
or way of being.  Of course, it is all still just silly,
not the idea of a soul itself.  I am not arguing
that such a thing exists or does not exist,
am not about to step there, not tonight
when I am tired and hungry
and there is nothing to eat
and no way to go anywhere.
But the soul, even just the idea,
even just as a thought, it is transcendent,
is beyond being anyplace at all
if it is a thing.  It is another type of existing.
That is the point.  Why think of souls at all
if that is not the point?

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