"Descartes and Rumours of a Plague”

That spooky space between one’s feet
and the earth, between
the step-by-step undoing
of mismatched sheets
tangled on the line
and the gravity of the sag,
the long latitudinal white between
“maybe” and the almost illegible
“not,” the overlap
of principle and principal,
a yawn and what I infer
is your “I suppose/propose yes”

I know I think, but I’m not sure
of the reason we reason, or what
follows, or the reason why some say
weather dictates whether we think
as others or think for ourselves.
I am, however, done with packing
for the countryside
much earlier this year,
my portmanteau hardly half full