Selfish Ponderings

"Selfish" has come to be most commonly associated with being concerned with one's Material Self, doing right by those investments to your own body, and to a lesser extent, those you are most intimate with. William James describes the arrangement beautifully:
A man holds a seat near the front of a bus. The bus fills faster than it empties and soon there are no empty seats available. An elderly woman hobbles onto the bus at a fresh stop. Nobody moves. Why does the man not relinquish his seat? It is not because he hates the woman -- she is a stranger. It is not because he values the seat either -- it is not his. The man stays seated because the seat is warmer to him when he is sitting upon it, just as food tastes better to him when it is in his own mouth, or happiness best understood when marked by your own or a friend's smile.
These poems are selfish not so much as they are of particular value to me, nor do they derive from outward spite. They are "self-centered," my thoughts, feelings, impressions, of the world which I am only invested insofar as I have always existed within it.
"Ponderings" is a word of unique usage for me. Characterized by its close proximity to "musings" or "wondering," to ponder is to think over in a way that demands attention without being quite so aggressive. It's not the mosquito in your ear but the crickets outside your window, singing to you just beyond what is immediate in a place that is both distant and hyper-present. It exists on several levels at once, rewarding a lack of focus -- pure, unrestrained thought. Until, that is, they fall into line, premise by premise, stanza by stanza.
I've chosen these poems for their consistency in these two respects. They express my experiences with existence from a position close to it. They exhibit loose, wild feeling brought down into a form fitting their contents. They bring what is unreachable -- even by me -- into something resembling focus.