Form

Socrates taught of ideas
which Plato wrought into forms,
claiming they were the perfections
of the things we encountered
in our every day lives:
tables, chairs, trees, bowls, and the land -
but more to the point:
justice, virtue, beauty, love, and the good.
But let us not forget to ask:
what of man and woman?
what of the elements, fire and water?
what of the least things, hair and dirt?
And let us also not ignore the problems
of distribution or composition.
And let us also not merely accept
that if there are objects,
and they have a form,
that if there are forms,
that they have no third greater.
And let us not balk
at the infinite regress
of thought or its objects.
And let us not become too dizzied
by the wildly indiscriminate multiplication
of likenesses in similar regress.
And let us not be too baffled
by how we may know them,
nor how the gods may know us.
For:
if we are made in their image
(or if we make them in ours)
we are of the same clay
and like understands like.
And all patterns converge on one pattern,
this is no mystery
and the greatest mystery.
And infinite regress
is the stuff of which
the universe is made,
it is how creation has always worked.
And there is always something greater,
and there is always something smaller,
and anyone who claims to know all
is more arrogant than those who say,
"Here is where I know not more."
 And learn to capriciously switch
from whole to part and back again
for the logic is our lens
not our fabric.
For if there is a thing,
there must be a something
which precedes the thing,
even if that something
has to be a nothing.