Helicopter Seeds

Spinning gyroscopes of spring,
Girls rise swirling on the wing,
Floating dandelions, unplanned,
Their meaning being just to land.

When umbrellas tumble from a gentian,
Is it just to get attention?
Is all that windblown fluff a blitz
Without its reassuring Google hits?

Is all this inflorescent flight
Just to titillate the sight,
The raison d’être of a seed
Only adolescent need?

Must all destiny be manifest,
Souls invisible and second best,
As if “to be or not to be”-ing
Were only based on viewers seeing?

Is a second’s kiss the test of ever,
Where never turns to Everest?
Is love created by a prayer?
Do milkweeds whirl because we're there,

Or for plumose salsify to fly,
Its parachute must catch our eye?
Can a tree of heaven really care
That the ground is even there?

Does a hopseed realize
That it's missing ears and eyes?
But would you criticize a kapok tree
Because it lacks urbanity

And doesn't really have the wit
To see when someone's surfing it,
Or, even worse, to know
When it's fallen in the snow?

Do we have to rate a bird
By whether it's been fully heard,
Or only focus on a nest
When it's noisier than all the rest?

Or is the emphasis on sight and sound
About the dark in which we’re bound,
As if the nucleus of creation
Were a consequence of observation –

Not to say it isn’t chic
To reck the rede we sometimes wreak –
Like those breathless girls who also fell
Upside down in kiss and tell?

April 17th, 2012, Kailua
July 17th, 2012, Tippet Alley