Fjords of the Mind
by Odin Roark

How proudly the pocketknife carves deeply
this first notch of playground conquest,
giving Johnny G second thoughts
about the new King of Mumbly-peg.

Later…

Challenges find teen battlefields,
street-smart words crossing swords,
gang-spawned tempests that rain down,
into graffiti tsunamis chiseling turf,
smearing posters,
fences, subways, buildings,
rebellious angst using notches of false pride
to challenge acceptance of love.

Even later…

When ambition merges
relationships and work life,
labor forging deep into married life
domestic life arousing new insecurities,
where more depressions are to be made
into adulthood’s ever-changing landscape
continuing like the slow evolvement
of ebb and tide,
happiness and despair,
making clear failure is not an option,
retreat never an escape.

Finally…

With some lessons learned,
maturity gazes upon the high walls carved,
the protection and/or captivity of experience,
the playground belt but a remnant of beginnings,
having given way to a persistent notching,
carving, cutting, digging,
of the deeper journey,
leaving erosion behind
in order to think, be beyond the now.

For…

Wisdom needs not a celebrate conquest,
knowing well life's purpose is to realize its own chiasmic sculpture,
its embracing of yesterday’s tributaries into the mind’s final fjord,
where the never ending evolvement into reborn arroyos
joins the sweep of cosmic verve into cyclic wonder
seeking yet another beginning…

once more.