It can be not taken. It can be not gotten. It can be out-of-contexted, twisted like wire or bread. It fills pores in a soul. It enters where empty. It satisfies and bonds. It draws persons closer. It makes them less and more. It can be expressed (supposedly). It can be discovered like a stone or artifact (only symbolically). It can be threshed, sifted for, critiqued. It has a place in the world as anything material. Can it be then examined, tested, measured? It may be too chameleon for that, protean, shape-shifting. Its authority has been challenged. It has a postmortem feel in the world after the postmodern. It has been lost. It might need to be found.

A dual-citizen of Latvia and the USA, Ivars Balkits lives in in a small mountain village in Crete, Greece. His poetry and prose have been widely published online and in print.