MORE THAN EPHEMERA
A dusty attic one must reorganise
Unlabelled boxes trying to hide
There will be at least one surprise
A diary and postcard tucked inside
A letter from a mother at the end
Recalling how the father had cried
This reply that he never got to send
Those painful few days went so fast
Broken dreams that time can’t mend
These are tokens of a forgotten past
That were of momentary significance
Now sure that the memories will last
One can no longer claim ignorance
Nor to hide behind one’s innocence
below hair line where crowns fit
an ethereal grid of light is lit
enabled by gentle magnetic incision
holds promise of spherical vision
new nodes appear, unlabelled
in timeless time, we’re enabled
There is always
a dull longing
that goes unlabelled
and hangs a layer or two
below a joy, a pang
somewhere in the soul
that can't be coughed up
or cut out, just endured.
A nonsense to the skeptic,
no more than perhaps
a twitch of an evolutionary
relic left unemployed within
the brain, now ossified
into an irritant jumping
across the boundaries
of our troubled sleep.
Whatever its origin,
it's always there
be it a hollow left in our psyche
from an umbilical when severed
by God or a buffering problem
in our brain,
the longing never leaves.
We try and quench it
with beauty, love, art
and myth but it remains
unfulfilled, as if a speck
of the infinite resides within
us all, that can absorb
everything we have
and then ask for more.
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