On the 29th day of February, one final poem for the leap year.

The Noble Sphinx
By John Herlihy

The noble sphinx lifted its dignified head
Not aging, not old, but ageless instead,
Ready to send forth the fearsome riddle,
Whose answer lies somewhere in the middle,
Between probing mystery and sheer enlightenment.
I stood in silence, my heart pounding in excitement.

With courage to question the sphinx no one would oppose,
Only a human could solve what only a sphinx could propose.
The sphinx never speaks, but to set forth the riddle,
Silence becomes her, no need to speak or scribble.
When I enter the sphinx’s presence, the air is subdued.
My mind becomes focused, with sparkling light imbued.

“Who am I,” the sphinx enigmatically intoned,
As if the elusive mystery would never be dethroned,
As a solution to life’s riddle for the world to behold,
This will never happen we have systematically been told.
The sphinx is always there, our curiosity to expose,
Protecting an ageless secret that only the sphinx knows.

“I have existed forever down through time;
I have not yet existed, my sound has not yet chimed;
I am a traveler on a journey who will never arrive,
To arrive is only to disappear, I no longer survive.
My bags contain hopes and promises that people hold dear,
When opened, they die sudden death on life’s pointed spear.”

I thought first of destiny always seeking to find its way,
But remembered when destiny arrives, it is here to stay.
I thought then of chaos in search of implicit order,
Only to realize that chaos has no hope within its fixed border.
My mind finally awakened to the mystery of tomorrow,
Beckoning from the distance with the evanescence of a rainbow.

The sphinx exists within us as a question never fully solved,
The human condition precludes easy answers to be resolved.
The noble sphinx sits within us smiling faintly and mute,
The knowing beast has the patience to remain forever astute.
Even if the echo of the precious riddle withers and dies,
Tomorrow whispers her promise although she never fully arrives.