I.

Trapped in concentric circles,
blind,
I was circumscribed.

Now I am a wound
pierced from every direction.
There’s such agony in
finally perceiving.

The beauty and multiplicity
is too much for an old man’s eyes.
The world too vast to be encompassed.

I might have said back then
back when
that I was a seer, a seeker
but it was deception.

I spun words in silent motifs
weaved a web around myself
and all the while
the world clamored and rattled.

Blind to the pain I caused I moved on
prophesized vision
when it was
oh it surely was
mostly
deception,
a construction flimsy, paper-thin
crumbling at last
scattered like confetti
strewn about
waiting for a gust of wind.

II.

Time gnaws away at what connects us
cuts us free
so we finally slip our moorings.

Memory is this thread that will not hold
but only tug at the aching flesh
snapshots and flickers
of a long voyage.

Out beyond all reach
is a limitless ocean
unknown expanse.
We vow to journey together
but we end up alone:
as we’re born so we die.

There is no rhythm and no cadence here
nor am I much concerned for what
may be extracted,
meaning, significance, connection,
just mirages for the traveler.

III.

Letting go to drift in the empty void
looking for nothing that will anchor me
I have come this far
and know not where I’m heading.

Living and dying
two facets of the same geometry
no enlistment of higher mathematics
will yield a more generous answer,
no prayer or deity
will offer rescue or consolation.

As language is bound by grammar
so is biology bound by time
framing it inescapably
stitching us into the continuous weave
of a cellular pattern
a biospheric mesh
we can never fully see,
much less
understand..

2023