the waterfall, thunderous and lofty, is a thin stream from across the valley, and yet i stop & stare
Across the Valley [Tanka]
2
From its perspective, we live in a vacant upside down underworld. It can't understand our terror over death and our obsession with life. Just thinking about it gives it nightmares, heebie-jeebies of being overrun by endless piles of creatures -- endless piles with endless needs. We may wrinkle a nose in disgust at its worldview, but it finds ours positively suffocating. But it forgives us our simple ways, we are just its food, after all.
I saw a bucktoothed monkey sit on the ground all alone. It looked the doofus - its dental- mental shortfall shone, but is the size of incisors a measure of one's smarts? Has anyone done the study, gathered data, made the charts? What if that dentally-outsized primate is a dreamer- a mastermind, a supervillain, or just a first-rate schemer? What if it just wants us to think that it's a huge dimwit? So, it doesn't show its erudition, or its razor-keen wit. Instead, it waits for us to be lulled to a false repose, so that it can show us we're all a bunch of biased schmoes.

the spider’s mind
is one with the silken web,
tripped by vibration