What is reality? You don’t need
philosophers to tell you;
you know.
When you think you see a person
and it’s only a dress-store mannequin,
you know the difference,
your whole tone of attention changes.

A photograph in a newspaper,
when looked at with a magnifying glass
is “in reality” only an array
of dots of varying density.
But a real human face, when magnified,
is organized and patterned
down to levels beyond the cell,
to the macromolecular basis of life,
and so is “real” through and through.

“Real dialogue” is not just words,
sounds, air waves, grammar or syntax,
or even just thoughts, concepts, and messages.
The only reality is revelation of personality,
direct experience of the life-stuff in action.