What are you looking for?

Been searching all my life

sometimes with eyes open fiercely

sometimes with eyelids clenched shut.

Feeling with my fingers in the darkness,

touching after things I could not see,

tracing outlines and shapes,

flat, solid, and imagined;

things hard and sharp,

surfaces soft, silken and scarred.

Peering deeply into the flame

and beyond, towards flickering shadows

that take turns to hide and then

to reveal things of truth and beauty,

of knowledge and emptiness.

Been searching all my life;

stripping words from curling pages

in the hope that they might come together

once more, and a third time to create meanings

from barely-grasped mutterings

and confident pronouncements.

Come and see!

calls the man who mixes love with truth

and whose tears shine like night-sky stars;

which, even when dried and long dispersed

into the atmosphere,

deliver more substance than the mountains

and enclose more reality

than the sun’s persistent rays.

Even the half-glimpses

have made the journey worthwhile.


© 2011 Ken Rookes