Deprivations Of A Poet..... Poem by RIC BASTASA

there a time that you go
into descriptions: a sunlit hill,
a golden dawn, full of details,
such as the nerves of a blue butterfly
with black legs, or a koi with its spots
of orange and white and golden fins
swimming among and floating on a clear pond
with green weeds and mossy stones beneath
them.

you have inherited it from a china man
or a Japanese haiku writer,

there is you however who wants to write
what you have in mind,
something intangible, so academic and
theoretical, or theological and
even philosophical, dealing with words
without skins, and color and bones
faces without eyes, clocks without hands,
stairs without steps,
orphans, and cities without arms,
corns without their ears,
and caterpillars without their
cocoons,

somehow you have deal with all these
enigma, or mysteries, or riddles or puzzles,
since you yourself have no answers or
patterns or configurations to arrive at
rest.

you shall rise and then be effaced forever
from the faces of certainties.
stripped of a body, you think you are nothing
but a mere psyche.

if indeed, there is a soul.
forever, you must float and listen.
travel endlessly without that sense of time.
of origins and destinations.
of right and wrong.
of reason.