Virtue of Logic

He believed in the generation
of opposites by the compulsion
and necessity of their own logic.
He whetted his mind to a fine edge
on the grindstone of science and
argued that a south pole assumed
a north pole, summer matched winter,
a friend for an enemy, systole
|and diastole, left hand and right,
high and low tides, a web and a fly,
an invisible wind that washes away
man’s granite monuments.
But when he stood on a stream’s bank,
a dill pickle in one hand and a
sandwich in the other and a hummingbird
twice (not once but twice) plunged its beak
into the pickle, he took off his shoes
and pressed bare feet against sharp rocks
to prove the virtue of his logic.