CLARITY'S JUST ANOTHER INTERPRETATION

CLARITY’S JUST ANOTHER INTERPRETATION

Clarity’s just another interpretation,

history, a suggestion from the grave,

and reality, for most,

a mutually reinforced consensus.

And I wonder about things like

the evolution of dreams

and the shadow-cats of conciousness

whose eyes widen in the dark

and how there’s no name you can give it

that the mind will answer to when you call

because your own voice is the mind as well

and that which you seek

is already here.

You can’t define the indefineable

but everything and everyone

is an expression of it

and in all they do and don’t do

express it.

The important thing is

not to let the bells of your profundities

sway like onerous horses

but to let them loose in the high fields

to play equinely with God.

You must learn to play like a child

with dragons

without being mastered

by the genius of your freedom.

You must understand

the spiritual life of clay

is an enrichment of the light

and one night in the flesh

is the collaborative aspiration

of trillions of stars

that have lived and died

their way to you

who sees and names

and includes them

in your vaster spaces within

as you have the sky and the moon and the trees.

You can’t drink the wine of life from a cup

and even if you can see the stars at noon

and the sun at midnight

you can’t put out to sea

from the bottom of a well.

You can’t illuminate a black hole

and you won’t find your reflection on the moon

and though we learn

life has nothing to teach.

Try to grasp it

and it’s always an apple

shy of your reach.

Express it effortlessly

as if there were nothing to say

and no one to say it

as children do when they play

and you’re the tree that bears it all

and life is what it is

and you are what you are.

A windfall.

PATRICK WHITE