What better way to woo those willing
Than offering something other than contrived
Semblances; winnowing unfeigned from pretense;
Fixing the bounds of clarity and shadow; calling those
Artless to walk quiet paths, and then, opening their hearts
To eternal Beauty obscured beyond the temporal…

As life propelled past innocence,
Hope sought soundness
Under the sun,
In prayer,
In music,
In nature,
In discipline,
In sculptures,
In another’s words,
In aesthetic striving,
In the faces of prospect,
In ancient holy manuscripts, in
The house of mourning and mirth, in
The rich marrow of doctrine;
For so many years
Grappling with restlessness,
When at last,
In vexation of spirit,
Vanity reached for something
Well beyond its grasp,
And, in desperation chose to
Walk another path- assumed - where
It sulked a season, laboring for the wind, as
Superbia sought out wizardly trusts (bade in mind’s eye)
In an attempt to adopt and apply arcana spoken of by
Mystical seekers; seers peeling the substrata of
Tellurian-being to reveal pearls of brio and
Coruscant creation.

But all was emptiness …

And even now,
As life continues,
I am afflicted often in
My thoughts and motives…
Apart from fruitless attempts– having
Been given only rare glimpses of BEAUTY
In curtailed cases, never more than a moment,
Never less than a lifetime- I question; will the
Cerement be placed [around me] in the
Absence of my ever knowing your
Fullness, or… is it only then
That your fullness can
Be known?


     richardlloydcederberg.com