The Life of the Mind
Every chance he has to scribble on his notebook's cave walls
But fails to seize the opportunity,
For apathy, indifference, lack of passion or unbridled desire,
Is reason enough for him to condemn his will
To die by riding, on Don Quixote's rackabones, Rocinante,
Into a revolving windmill or the tip of a giant's jousting lance.
Oh, he knows, all too well, from past lapses,
The grievous price his conscience pays
When he fails to honor his heart's covenant with his brain:
Lingering frustration, anguish, humiliation, and shame.
Indeed, a squandered possibility for creation
Causes him to brood, for days, over what might have been,
What he realizes is irretrievably lost to his poetic oeuvre,
The hole its unknowable existence leaves in his soul,
That agonizing absence of a piece of his cosmos.
And so it is that he stays awake, all hours of the clock,
Prodding his pen to capture scattered stimuli indiscriminately,
For fear of missing his spirit's cries,
The slightest iota of a whisper or whimper or whoosh
That might guide him to the kingdom of light,
Bring him closer to fulfilling the mission of his mind's life.
04/28/10
|