Monday, when we're born, we do not seem to know.
   We're no less thoughtless than the thorax-scraping cicada,
   which we call song,
   nor more useful to our neighbors than the damming beaver,
   which we call industry.

   The truth of it is we're more ignorant than either.
   We yap and toil and lumber about
   from Monday through Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
   as though the days themselves stop us from living
   the lives we imagine.

   Then Friday comes, when less than the cicada,
   we think we fight the war of night.
   And Saturday morning, afternoon: we do what we do
   with less purpose than the beaver's,
   letting habit form our words

   tricking ourselves into thinking them deeds
   and finding other such ways to pass time,
   to mark it like the tail-hammered trunk
   or endless echoes of the dark summer sky,
   saying Sunday will come, when we use chance

   to elevate ourselves from the animal kingdom
   when on our knees we wait to be born,
   on Monday, which we'll deny when it comes.
   But no less than the cicada and the beaver,
   we get there anyway. Do we ever get there.