Robin Helweg-Larsen

False Analogies

The Universe is made of false analogies -
flawed observations, secondhand “I see”s,
discarded dreams.
Nothing is truly as it seems.
We build our intellectual shelter from life’s gales
from scraps of lumber and found nails,
anything within reach,
rope washed up on a beach,
a sliding glass door, still intact, 
used as a wall. And all because
the Universe we sense has flaws,
disobeys its own laws,
is just a framework for the Mind That Plays,
a sketch, hypothesis; a tract, not fact;
a work in process, changing with the days.
Dig deeper, and find fresh discrepancies.
Our shelter, in fair weather, keeps us warm,
can stand up to a breeze…
will be no shelter in the coming storm.

Anglo-Danish by birth but Bahamian by upbringing, Robin Helweg-Larsen has been published in Alabama Literary Review, Allegro, Ambit, Amsterdam Quarterly, Pulsebeat and other international journals. He is Series Editor for Sampson Low’s ‘Potcake Chapbooks – Form in Formless Times’, and blogs at formalverse.com from his hometown of Governor’s Harbour.