Water of life
Cuts into stone
Reveals depths
To be plumbed
A hard journey down
A harder journey back
Rewards every step
Even the most painful
Water of life
Cuts into stone
Reveals depths
To be plumbed
A hard journey down
A harder journey back
Rewards every step
Even the most painful
The winding path
Which takes me well beyond
Desired goals
Has served me well
Offered possibility
Once well outside my ken
Comforts challenged
Bound’ries shattered
With every step astray
From oft trod trails
Discover unknown countries
Within myself
A lesser man would I be
Who’d stayed the straight and narrow course
To some place known
When I’d set out
Such delight
It seems
The artist took
With godly visage
And none too small
The chisel hammered
With whimsical caprice
A fitting ode to Gods
Whose whims become
The stuff of legends told
We traverse the night
Guided by our inner light
Undistracted by the dark
Nor the turmoil of the flock in flight
It is impossible
To be objective
About an experience
I haven’t had
I have convinced myself
That chaos follows me
As if a companion
Or a stalker I can not shake
Until today’s revelation
That it is merely disorder
Of my own orderly creation
Like the roiling waters
Left in the wake
Of a vessel underway
And I am always underway
Though always looking back
Focused on the havoc
Left behind
In the lives of self and others
Manufacturing in my mind
The spiritual narrative
Of a Job-like tragedy
That relieves me of responsibility
Magic is a child
This unknown girl
Who casts upon
My weary soul
Unfettered glee
The guileless love
Which is delight
In briefest moment
Such sweet respite
From adult cares
Her master class
In living well
Perched
Beneath a sky
Of cobalt and lavender
While the dying sun
Throws glitter bombs
Off glass towers
But all I can see
Are three dots
Racing on the display
“Jason is typing”
This Schrödinger’s mobile
Holds two truths
Like petals pulled from a daisy
Each dot flashing in turn
He loves me
He loves me not
Both are true
Until the dots stop
To reveal the nature
Of the final petal
These many lines
Of thought
Of action
Of possibility
Some converging
Some parallel
Some intersecting
A disorder
Of subtler
Orders
Patterns
Within patterns
Within a cross-section
Of a whole
Imperceptible
Step back
And back again
To reveal the whole
With its harmony of line
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