What Mean Means

Go. What play is to art.
What drift means for the genes.
How heat helps to fuse. Wait.

Go back a step. You can’t
Mean means when what you want
Is to say what mean means.

To make known your own wish.
To want to think through words.
Grey skies on the last day

Of school at home. Light rain,
Sleet, and snow. Free the mind.
Who does that? Who is mind?

The board is thick with white
Stones, no chance for black stones
To come back. Play the game

Like that, and yes, we’re game.
Play the game all grey stones,
No board, cold rains. Which means?

Meant

To change, to swap. To hold as one.
To share. To not be rare. To share
So much it seems too low, too dull.

To be in the midst, in the crowd.
All these link to the sense of mean,
If not from the same source. No name

Means, no word, no sign, if not shared.
But what is meant is not the same—
Close at best. What’s meant shifts and shifts

As all things, all waves, shift and shift.
That’s the point. One wave makes no sea,
But no wave can be just one wave,

And this isle rides in mist and storms
And seems to rise as it grows green.
What’s meant is not what is; what is

Means no such thing. Ropes of seiche waves
Go to show each pitched force at play.
We don’t mean what we meant to say.