A child said, What is the grass? I answered, blades

of green, a conspiracy in the field, low-lying,

swaying and breathing together, night and day.

And what I assume you shall assume. I,

the anonymous Kosmos, incomparable insider,

revealing conspiracies in the wind’s susurrus.

AKA Q, I contain multitudes

and on social media prove an outsize presence,

each hour posting top secrets in confidence.

I instigate gossip of flames, so many uttering

tongues, echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers. A living

and buried speech is vibrating in the networks.

Consider our world wide web, filaments ceaselessly

venturing out, the unseen proved by the seen

till that becomes unseen and is proved in turn.

Words loos’d to the eddies of the winds as the supple

boughs wag with accusations and we fly,

migrating to our forum’s GreatAwakening.

Note: This poem uses language from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

and “A Noiseless Patient Spider.”

***

Philip Fried has published eight books of poetry, most recently Among the Gliesians (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2020). Thomas Lux said about his poems, “I love Philip Fried’s elegant quarrels with the cruelty and ignorance of the world or, more precisely, its inhabitants” The Guardian twice chose his work for its “Poem of the Week” feature.