Blinding Mirages


How rapid their collection
From nasty medicines
Cloaked with mother’s smile,
To spoonfuls upon mouthfuls,
Handfuls to bucketfuls
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,
Which too vanish.

For the fortunate…

Insight makes light the burden,
Revealing a road paved with perception’s invite,
Rousing the traveler from a dream,
Knowing to awaken,
is to give the senses
another chance…

See.
Hear.
Smell.
Touch.
Taste.

Ah, yes, that morning savor of “wake up” reality.