Blue-Light Lure

Might it be
today’s cliff glows
not with ocean mist
but with the hush of glass and glare,
screens shimmering like baitfish
flickering across our palms,

where promises slide through pixels
like silk through restless fingers,
and every swipe
is a step nearer the edge?

We follow
algorithms dressed as oracles,
their coded whispers
curling like incense in temples of trending thought,
telling us who we are,
what we need,
what we lack,

as if truth were a product
boxed, branded, boosted
into belief.

And oh, how the scams arrive,
polished as mirrors,
reflecting just enough of us
to seem intimate,
voices smooth as varnished wood,
offers gleaming like wet streets at dusk,
promising arrival
without a journey.

We click,
like moths persuaded by neon moons,
like divers certain the surface
will catch them on the way down.

Each lie layered
like lacquer on a counterfeit coin,
each claim a painted door

on a wall with no room behind it.

Influence drips honey-thick,
sweetening the air
until discernment drowses,
and we drink
from fountains that refill with illusion,
again and again.

How easily
we confuse visibility with virtue,
volume with value,
the viral with the vital,

our better knowing
set aside like a coat
on a warm, deceptive day.

And yet…

Somewhere beneath the noise,
truth waits,
not loud, not dressed in spectacle,
but steady
as a compass buried in the chest.

It does not shout.
It hums,
like roots drawing water in the dark,
like dawn gathering courage
behind a long night’s curtain.

It is there
in the quiet pause before a click,
in the question that tugs at certainty,
in the flicker of doubt
that refuses to be dimmed.

And if we listen,
if we step back from the glittering edge,
if we learn again
the shape of honest ground,

we may yet find
that the shoreline exists,
not where illusion points,
but where clarity begins.

For truth, though often hidden,
is never gone,
it is the patient healer,
the clear spring beneath the chaos,
waiting
for thirsty minds
to remember how to kneel and drink discreetly.