Filtering Energy, a poem by Adolph Caso

Filtering Energy
By Adolph Caso

There being no answer
To the ultimate question,
That every human being with conscience
Has to become a believer
Despite the absence
Of any objective depiction
Of our image in God!
We know that neither
Two drops of water
That transform into oceans,
Nor,
Two snow flakes
That transform into glaciers–
Regardless on how they drop to the earth,
Are equally similar but never the same,
Unless touched by man.
For,
Only man-made things are definitive–
Changeable as we command.

I sit in front of the mighty
Adolfo Tree–its branches sprawling on the wall.
Missing from its peaks
Are samples of perched raptors:
When they appear,
They produce beauty in motion–
As opposed to the awkward turkey vultures:
Their lives evolve in the manner of other forms,
And just as discriminating.

Branches run in all directions
Defying gravity in its very essence:
From the top to the bottom,
One side to the other,
Traces of water are evident everywhere:
In the smallest undeveloped leaf
To the largest tree-trunk!
From one side to the other,
All the while,
Water flows throughout.

What keeps it within the smallest leaf?
And, progressively,
How does it expand to or into the largest?
What makes each leaf flicker?
And,
After how many steps,
How many gates,
Does it re-generate itself into the ground?
What other gates open and close
To induce proportions?
What other filters
Allow water to move forward and backward?
When it shimmers,
Can a Raphael objectively reproduce it with his brushes?
Energy is never energy onto itself;
It exists, only,
As a-never ending filtering devise
That unconsciously goes from one cell to another.
When it creates and turns chemicals into biological forms,
Consistently and uniformly,
With no connection
Between us—
It achieves its ultimate goal:
The creation of a new and different form
That had ever existed.

Why am I shouting about my defeat?
My ignorance remaining thick,
It’s tearing at my heart!
Despite a curiosity that is running rampant.

In full view of this tree,
Am I,
Finally,
The isolate I’ve been my entire life:
That little bit of a man to be discarded on the street
As one throws off a hunk of used-up paper?

While I am unable to understand the tree
As a whole or in parts:

How can I understand my fellow man
When I do not know who I am?