Mirage Files
by Odin Roark

How rapid their collection
From nasty medicines
Cloaked with mother’s smile
To spoonfuls upon mouthfuls
Handfuls to bucketsful
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

For the fortunate

Insight makes light the burden
Revealing a road paved with perception
Rousing the traveler from a dream
Merely waiting to awaken