if we had never left

If we had but never left this room
how much would not exist to us.

If we had scarcely space or time
what would such beauty mean to us?

What love could we feel but
for one and another?

What skies but stark white,
sunrise of yellow light?

Without earth to feel between toes
we would have only the wiles of tiles,

extracted and manufactured,
in our minds like the birds and the bees.

There nails on cotton sheets
reverberate in silent souls.

If we had but never left this room
this is all that we would know.