Not Like Is Is

Sit with it ‘til you see it,
Slow as your thoughts are—the lights
Change—the night to day, the day

To night. The lamps switch back on
Or off. In town, the trick’s blurred,
As it is in clouds or rain.

It’s hard to note from jail cells
Or a sick bed. At the poles,
Both day and night fail for months,

But they get there, like a pair
On the dance floor who split far
To the ends of the hall, then

Come back to clinch and spin some.
You may think what is like is
A thing like a thing it’s not,

That sits for you to parse it,
But it’s not. What is like is
All to do with since and next,

No thing more than like the thing
It’s been so as to reach this
Move it makes like some thing else.

In the time you took to skip
Through or past all this, you changed.
The light changed. Sit with it. Dance.