Mirage Files
by Odin Roark
How rapid their collection
From nasty medicines
Cloaked with mother’s smile
To spoonfuls upon mouthfuls
Handfuls to bucketsful
Filling irony’s three-drawer history
Upon one’s shoulders
How innocent they approach
These mirages of surety
Where rest and peace certainty
Evaporates like vanishing rabbits in a hat
Life’s landscape
A parent’s belief
A child’s trust
A teacher’s urging
A boss’s mind-game
A relationship’s oasis
Eventually
The undulating future flattens
Erosion’s desert wind catches up
The parched soul forgets thirst
Realizes that which weighs down its back
Has made but a packhorse of the seeker
Nodding exhaustion’s acquiescence
Delusions swirl upwards
Sands of the past
Readily make way for tomorrow’s footprints
For the fortunate
Insight makes light the burden
Revealing a road paved with perception
Rousing the traveler from a dream
Merely waiting to awaken
Silver moonbeams strike the old packhorse bridge
As its ancient stones use silent language
To speak of those who passed this way before
And stood on these worn slates staring in awe
At the sandstone walls surrounding the pool
To echo the thundering waterfall
Firefly ballet on the watery stage
As nightingale chorus and frogs engage
A contralto owl adds a haunting tune
While the baritone fox sings to the moon
The whispering willows applaud with grace
As I lose myself in this mystic place
It moves me to tears, almost ev’ry time
But on moonlit nights, it is just sublime ~