On Knowing Nothing

I know that I know nothing.   

                        ~Socrates

It’s easy to walk into this,

a swirling mist,

and remember the stories

of no words, from the beginning,

the ones no one could tell us.

It’s the realm of the Great Unknowing,

of wordlessness and silence,

where mythic truths come to us

to reside in our hearts,

notoriously and sensuously,

intangibly and mystically.

We are nearly perfect here,

remembering a world

that was the impulse of wonder

and imagination, 

living from our hearts,

breathing the wilderness

where nothing is explained 

but somehow known,

where fragrances are seen,

flavors are heard,

but our tears will remain salty.

from: After All the Years of Gravity

Unpub. MS p. 4

About Therapy

Memory means something, always,

but it isn’t precise, ever.

So many times I have scattered some of my memories over

a mental landscape for scrutiny and eventual reassembly,

thinking I might find something long overlooked, 

something that would fill in the memory gaps,

reveal a long forgotten name, a missing event, 

reasons for my occasional unravelings, 

or I’d find a new poetic voice.

It is so difficult to know if I should reassemble 

everything in more colorful and musical ways,

thinking that would relieve some anxieties

or make life look better or the memories more interesting.

I ask the therapist to help, who then often asks me, 

How long have you been carrying this around?

You still haven’t fixed this?

I’m looking for understanding and closure…

Despite her earnest efforts, 

inexplicably, I’d still procrastinate,

still lose some things,

never to be found, most likely,

not really missing them, 

coping as I have for many years.

But sometimes, just once in a while, when standing 

in my back acre, my heart emptied of words,

sipping a little wine, 

I feel the consoling voice 

of that one lost love, unforgettable, 

and still I wonder what could have been.

From: Getting There

Unpublished MS p. 35

What A Time It Was

It could be The Beatles or Beethoven,

the music I remember most,

from places and time,

memories becoming vaguely familiar strangers,

not so much the reality of the time

but some form of what that reality was, 

continually stretched, compressed, broken,

and reassembled in creative and  

sometimes startling ways,

floating somewhere around

how it really was (now long gone),

how I remember it,

and how I wish it had been.