[Carl Copeland]

Tony, this is philosophical verse that even I can love. I love the audacity of L1, matched with the provocative last line. A few thoughts:

I’m innocent of Heidegger, but I find the epigraph misleading, because it seems to ask why there’s anything at all. Your poem, as I take it, is about why or how, given the existence of things, we add on a layer of meaning and metaphor. I love how you’ve illustrated that layer with the exquisitely random “whiskers of ice,” “panther heat,” “grace of doves,” etc.

I might prefer “mind” (or even “soul”) to “brain,” since a brain is a necessary but insufficient condition of meaning-making.

I’m a bit of a stickler, but I honestly didn’t notice the problem with “lies” until you corrected it. I’d let it agree with “phone” and think of the rest of the list as add-ons (encouraged by the absence of “and”). A shame to spoil your near perfect rhymes.