I look at myself
A blur
In the foggy mirror
Every morning
Even after washing away
Another layer
Of accumulated detritus
Like the sculptor
Finding the figure
Inside the stone
Like a cathedral
Not yet complete
A hundred years
After the passing
Of its architects
I remain a work in progress
Under construction
In this life
In the last
In the next
All that have been
And all yet to come
I knew the wolf
To be a wolf
But in the forest
He was kind to me
So did not think
To give a shout
Let Grandma know
Wolf was about
April fool, tis me
No fool
The Woodsman, he
Fortunately
Or for dessert
Wolf would have had
Me
Sometimes
You don’t quite
Get it right
But it’s OK
To get it mostly right
Or at least somewhat right
Just so long
As you’re
In the right
It wasn’t for the words we’d speak
Or to look into each other’s eyes
(You never took off your sunglasses)
To see or be seen
Or for a breath of fresh city air
In the chill afternoon
Yes, we spoke, shot the shit, as you say
You think, I’m sure, because voices fill the silence
But I can see the tendrils of sound
As they weave a caress
Coaxing our essence to expand
Occupy the same space
A moment not just of friendship
Or intimacy
Or even love
Something deeper
A moment in which our beings
Touch
Intertwine
A flirtation with the insight
That two can be one
In your presence
Woven into your essence
I sense the greater truth
Of the connection
Which makes us all
The One
Beneath all the other reasons
Our conscious and unconscious tell us
The latent awareness deep within knows
This is why we gather
This is why we linger
Long after all the other reasons have passed
That awareness is The One
To live as this awareness
Is to awaken
While I
Outside
Peer through the gaps
At what I could never have
While those
Inside
Lead a life
Purposefully removed
From the gate’s other side
The strands seek the strength
Of numbers
Of diverse fibre
The twist that binds
Knotted to the cleat
That is love
That is compassion
That is empathy
But ever tested
By the pull of anger
Sheared by fear
Sundered by hate
But always
Knit together again
All strands in the rope
Familiar becomes
Other while other becomes
All too familiar
Pix to Words 