--- In his hand he holds the perfect outer body of a horseshoe crab. They’re everywhere. His eyes drift over them. “They didn’t die,” I say. A beach lounger leans...
In his hand he holds
the perfect outer body
of a horseshoe crab.
They’re everywhere.
His eyes drift over them.
“They didn’t die,” I say.
A beach lounger leans closer,
to hear too.
“They outgrew their shells. Look,
the front edge opened like a seam,
and they emerged.”
Gnomonic growth.
Nature’s cruelty
becomes
Nature’s cleverness.
Not every seemingly sad story
is one, actually.
Some things grow
not to change
but to become bigger.
A perfect copy, an enlarging,
to become more oneself.
Gnomic increase:
The happy growth of wisdom.
An increased capacity to think,
brought about by the simple exercise
of living longer, engaged.
But longer implies
no longer young,
Nature’s cruelty,
Age signifies loss.
Not so for the mind and its
capacity to enlarge upon itself,
to become more of
the person you were,
with gnostic gains,
The bigger, better version
of your simpler, youthful self.
Nature’s cleverness.