The Key
by Odin Roark

Could it be…

The matinee iPhone capture,
the ballerina’s grand jeté photo,
her white sinuous grace slicing the air,
filling the audience with awe?

Perhaps it was the simplicity
of a sidewalk artist in the outdoor January,
fingerless gloves inhibited by cold,
yet allowing purpose to spring free,
a brush of color embellishing a canvas,
brightening the otherwise bleak gray
of surrounding gray-slushed streets
where winter clad pedestrians scurry by.

It could have been inside the warmer MOMA,
gazing at a child astride a bench
mesmerized before Monet's Water Lilies,
dangling feet very still,
barely touching the floor,
eyes intent,
blinking not.

Later was considered
the actor's performance,
morphing the make-believe character
into both artist and audience self-discovery,
sometimes retching,
often painful,
for three acts,
undeniable.

It might have been
the writer’s block walking home through
the night’s icy mist,
reflecting off windows up high
raining down amber light,
nudging nocturnal restlessness,
keeping insomnia alive,
yet so in need of rest,
sleep's escape ever evasive.

Or possibly climbing the four-flight walk-up,
anomaly’s reality entering fortressed walls,
an apartment’s darkness awakening connection,
beckoning different illumination,
first by moonlight,
then by mood’s flickering candle flame,
as exhaustion rests chin-to-chest above keyboard,
enigmatic meaning enjoining lucid dreams.

It’s feasible childhood reverie did it
with its languorous persistence
only heard when giving in to sleep,
the evil cherub of infancy’s memories
spewing muffled sounds of captivity
revisiting frayed and worn adulthood
inspiring buried innocence to live again,
dragging growing-up-fragments forward,
ignoring yesterday’s insistent obstacles,
or maybe…

Writer’s head jerks up.

Eyes burst open.

Fingers attack keyboard.

Monitor awakens with…

“How elusive this epiphany of truth
being a simple admittance that one’s prison of fear
shackles and chains imagination,
blindfolds creativity into solitary confinement,
nurtures self doubt, alienation, and hate
into the quintessential darkness,
disallowing manifest love,
the master key to everything."