Fool’s Paradise

What is it to see
but never emerge from the dark?

Children marvel at color,
movement,
perception,
not knowing
control mongers await them,
famished gluttons who relish
adults obviating consciousness.

Some risk pain,
while too few discover
healing is not a poultice
to cover a wound,
but an eardrum,
an eyelid
to remedy contrived storms,
blasts of empty oxygen
programmed to destroy
observation's eloquent gift,
the always present
sense of truth,
or not.

Risk awaits…

Perhaps muddied,
but nevertheless
always at the ready,
actuality's hardened muscles
ready to serve,
to discern platitudes from profundity.

How courageous
this willingness to risk,
knowing to cower
is to embrace that safe place,
ignorance's wanton indulgence,
an anesthetized existence
afloat in the clouds of delusion,

where fools of paradise reside.