Answers Poem by Allan Hayes

A slice of bread is not the same,
perhaps,
As the wheat field moving in the
moonlight in the rain.
But we seek connections in the dance,
hour to hour, day to day.
Meaning partakes of frivolous decay.

Softly the ocean in the night may set
the mood,
Deep black and brooding currents
dark and restless.
But the fin on the fish on the plate
may hint of these,
And that may beckon up a deeper day.

Dark moon is pulling on her blood:
thought is not a player..
The chemistry doesn't know what is
above it, where
She feels an ancient harmony,
and
Embracing a transition of the blood,
she
Wanders in the rituals of womanhood,
Gazes at the color of future eyes,
while
Pulling gently at her swollen breast, she
Smiles and takes her visions as reality.

Who cares if it's a river of her own meanderings,
the grasses smell bright green, birds fly where
she wants.
They are a part of something uncontrived.
Her dalliance persuades the hour to come to life.
We take our meaning not from the
things themselves,
But from the evanescent shapes cast
by our thoughts.

While languoring in the fern enfeathered
glade
Late sunlight dapples, lending the
afternoon a mood,
She notices a mushroom tilted in the
shade;
The caterpillar and Alice, the teasing
questions; or
An umbrella in the wind; perhaps a
parachute of silk?

She called upon the evening as a tide
that pulled night underwater,
Into a receding sleep where
Deer approached the river, soft
and holy,
Gentle eyes looked at the water,
Knowing only what they know,
and needing nothing,
They proceed, right now,
with lips unmoving
And never expect more than is already.

Why does it matter what we are? or why
we are? or
How it's turning out.
If we knew, would it matter, would
it change a thing?
Every morning we awake, and
need to
Take new emptiness and coax it
into life.

At the observatory, we look around,
and
Follow light back into time,
where
Nebulae diaphanous are softly reeling,
moving
Shapes changing somewhere sometime
only marking their intentions
with ghostly adumbrations.

And so the mind in restless search for
meaning,
Looking out between the clouds to
distant stars
Can't find any answers that aren't
ours.