A RIDDLE OF BELONGING
Bright fragment of morning,
this view,
not all,
but sufficient to pause and breathe,
soaking in time,
a flavour hardly remembered,
orbited.
The layers of this, a riddle
Unfolding, rambled,
Conjured, tranced,
Misdirected.
Fleeing far from home,
We wander about
Nostalgic
For pastel dream.
Unable to re-insert,
Wriggle into that,
We cluster, eyes dreamy,
Around flaming fires
‘Til they smoke and splutter,
And we stretch, ache-limbed,
Search for farther fuel.
To stave the rain
We coccoon in caves,
Freeze dust and mud,
Roof in stone,
Limit light,
Fabricate, imitate, colour,
Desire to own our own,
Where, we say, the heart is.
A hope more habit,
More prison, more excuse,
Than our tiny world allows.
Somewhere
To return to
After filling time
Wasting time,
Validating use
In useless works.
A headlong career,
Slippery, cold, gravy train,
Glutinous, pasting days,
Covering over the cracks,
Crevasses of blue depthlessness,
Fractures within the slick logic.
To avoid that rupture
The mind replaced, time left over filled
With the chattering jingled dreams.
No need now to think,
All image offered up:
The screen of wisdom
Around whom we
Are satillites,
Moths
Failing to see
Our own burning wings,
The flicker of time
Eating timelessness,
Eating alternatives.
Clouds fill the day,
Sun and moon
Tell us all.
We float, evaporating,
Watching weather forecasts.
We have slipped between words
Singing inane hymns
To drown silence.
We who were born
To swim
The silences
Between moments
Between stars
Between heavens and hells,
To be at home,
Though homeless,
Silent
And singing,
Simultaneous,
In and out,
Seer and seen,
A field flowering,
Fragrant perception.
No longer fighting angels,
We become surrogate.
Subdued, swaying,
Conveniently untroubled,
Pacified.
****
sparked by a quote by Derrick Jensen, and a post by Ruth at:
http://inscendence.com/making-ourselves-at-home/
These words consider the layers of shell, of desire for a tangible home, a longing for belonging, the dreams fabricated within dreams. Mazed, chasing butterflies off cliffs….
simonhlilly 
your poem explodes with ingenuity. thank you for sharing it with me. tony
lovely and thorough Simon – thanks
Thanks, though I feel only the surface was scratched. I have a feeling this idea of home/belonging/homeless/loss of home fuels most of our current human neuroses/activities as well as much of religious yearning and technological hungers?
“To swim the silences between moments…” Impressive thought, Simon.
Perception is always purely selfish, subjective. Doing is overrated, paying attention and silence regarded as indulgence. What if our function/purpose is just to be creation’s audience?…
Hmm…though not like silent slaves in Plato’s cave contemplating shadows on a wall…surely not that…for your poetry is doing…is creation. And Simon, I sense I indulge ellipsis so that my poetry breathes, and so that there is that swimming between moments that you describe so eloquently.
Yes, there must be self-reflection. We must know that we watch, and that that watching is the more important the more attentive it is. Not that we are forbidden from acting, we have not been cast from the Garden, but that awareness expands to include, rather than contracts to define, and actions result as an artistic collaboration,rather than warfare, with reality. And poetry is not really doing so much as recording the watching. If truth is there it emerges from the bouquet of ideas, from the accepting of other views…wrestling with eels….
amazing one simon.
it seems we give such poor heed to the inner self that has sharper eyes and hearing. Inspirational writing !