there are other entities than human 
on the pilgrim path-
more than most of us know
who are still learning.

picking up garbage on my way to the beach
i think of how it's got to be how we are 
in a plastic savage way, how human 
human refuse 
defines us. 

yet as i read the air
other elementals who
are not thrown 
by us away, entities
that recompose, who even
as we fall, rise.

the theosophists say 
there's evolution of spirit
in history, more complex
than the progress
from savage to civilized
and back.