Thwart my plans;

Extend your hand;

Demand your stand.

Convince yourself you’ll understand.

We all disband into pieces and parts.

No amount of smarts can outwit nature’s art.

We pedal away our days, each repetition resulting in a small fray of DNA decay. Like rings on a tree, we initially mark with glee each lap around the sun, rejoicing in the continual expectation that there will always be another one.

Soon our present becomes a series of perpetual motion, and our hope pours into the someday that may provide a time to rewind.

As the sun sets once more, our inner landscape is quickly filled with the amorphous sea consisting of pieces of us and our reality. A concoction of wishes, memories, and imaginings supply us with company as we lay ourselves down to sleep.

Sinking into the depths of the inner dreamscape, even more of life’s contents emerge from the plumbs underneath. Irrational and without sense it’s tempting to dispense with the happenings of our slumber, dismissing them as mere figments of life while one was under.

Nevertheless, these visions in the night accompany us on our journey of life, if nothing else but to entertain us until the dawn breaks with new light. Some even offer us flickers of insight if we choose to use our eyes for this kind of sight.

Strength and might may allow us to place faith solely in our waking insights, and it may even feel that this is right; so be it. These faculties have no jurisdiction in the recesses of the depths within; there is no invitation to pick what one would like to see in the cinema of the inner world’s reality.

Rather we are passengers along for the ride. Despite whatever terrors or joys experienced in the dead of night, our task is to go onward and forward on the side of daylight.

Where we, once again, find ourselves in the position of passenger, affixed to an object traversing the terrain of the cosmic darkness, governed by principalities and forces unseen, though possibly known.

Our knowledge and intellect may tempt us to the point of confusion about our rightful place in the world and dismiss the notion that it wasn’t us who set the tides into motion, nor do we have the faintest true notion of the vastness of the oceans.

Like a grain of sand that believes itself to be the whole of land, we easily lose sight of what is at hand.

Whether it be in our real-world strife or our excursions into the unknowns of night, we equally can become disoriented without some flicker of light. Whether it be that of the Northern Star or the inner flame within us all, there’s always a way for us to see, if and only if we recognize where we stand and choose to be.

The first lines of this poem were used via NightCafe Creator, an AI art generator, to create the top image. You can view more of my collection here.