Poem

Once already was I dead
and once born again,
once doomed
and once awakened
shaken with a glimpse of wisdom,
overbidden by wild wonder,
grappling with freedom
and hope.

To deny the half-faced faiths
that protect frightened children
from themselves,
is to welcome the abysmal—
rending and searing—
the tumbled world grown unexpected
in its senselessness,
and sour in the bright mist
of grey and foul divinity
where fear festers in innocence.

But I live.
Tomorrow wakes and wakes,
swollen with surety
that all things have sources and make sense
with the cunning of a wilderness.
Right rain, reason,
bones and symmetry,
and full fleshing of the mind,
kings within our dust
clean as marble.
As fond as an eddy's wet whispers,
as just as eyes and wings,
and as fair as the seasons
are based choices, found joy.