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# Epistemology
- URL: https://www.merionwest.com/epistemology/
- Published: 2026-09-04T14:57:38.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-04T15:55:24.000Z
- Description: Jennifer Marysia Landretti
- Author: MW Editors
- Tags: Poetry, Arts

> Everyone in that

> house

> was asleep—

> save me

> downstairs, standing

> in a doorway

> where my host said

> she used a piano wire

> right about, oh

> here

> tapped the lintel

> between kitchen and hallway:

> must have used a spike nail

> to bear her weight.

> Yes–

> but I felt no roughness to the plaster.

> Well, he explained, that

> was sixty years ago

> Yes but—

> and one night I was downstairs

> reading. All of a sudden:

> horrid crashing

> upstairs, bookshelves falling

> one against another, so I rush

> up and find everything

> undisturbed.

> And? 

> Made my skin crawl.

> 

> All this I recalled 

> in what light there was and felt the plaster

> once again, my mind turning on a word:

> *epistemology*

> allowing *epistemology*

> to float there, swinging

> back

> and forth

> on the neck

> of a shadow,

> traveling one way

> then another;

> like a Grecian

> bucksaw

> working its way down

> through a windfall

> in speculation’s forest:

> *epistemology*

> all those serrate syllables!

> with Aristotle tugging

> at one end and Plato

> at the other, tugging back,

> the pair of them producing

> a dogged sound

> yet soothing in its regularity

> there amid

> the weird

> thingy-things

> drifting

> so aimlessly up

> and down in the half

> light

> of that eternal

> dusk.

> 

> Then

> 

> Plato hears something

> and stops. He

> abandons his post

> to enter the hemlocks

> and climb a black hill

> among the stars.

> 

> But Aristotle, my man,

> keeps going

> working that insatiable word

> with its empty handle

> at the other end

> always

> retreating as

> he reaches

> and reaching

> as he retreats.

### [Jennifer Marysia Landretti](https://jenniferlandretti.com/?ref=merionwest.com) writes poetry and essays. Her themes are nature, place, and spirit–and in recent years, gender, which has served as a vector to explore the latter three.