Each soul walks cloaked in secret light,
A prism cut by senses’ might
What you hear may not be near
To how the moth perceives the night.

To us, the stars are silent things,
But bats see echoes, flapping wings;
Bees taste color through the air,
And snakes feel heat like whispered flares.

The spider strings a trembling tune
Across the silken afternoon,
And fish, with pulses in their skin,
Read river poems we cannot begin.

The world is vast, but more so still
When seen through Nature’s fractured will.
No creature lives in the same frame –
Each Umwelt sings its own true name.

You are not in the world, my friend,
But rather, in your world, no end.
A sovereign of your sensing skies,
With boundaries drawn behind your eyes.

So tread with awe where others go,
Their paths are ones you’ll never know;
For every heartbeat, furred or feathered,
Builds a world, projected, tethered.