Hiding Place Poem by Jay Mandeville

Today, come with me,
and we'll stake our claim:
a hiding place
in a quaint, abandoned sawmill,
beside a solitary stream.

I should really first go fetch my maps,
fragrant charts on fresh-cut poplar.
Instead, I'll wander, create some suspense,
and the hiding place comes after,
written out for all of us,
in our final words and last laughter.

What've you and I learned by hiding?
Mawkish words, like excellent
clocks, sink the unfathomable.
Yet we go on having this conversation
(there is no mathematical certainty):
and yes, we wander and make
of disorder and fever
ingenious, congruent diaphany.
But...what of that?

First, we're finding a
protagonist for ourselves.
We are, simply, going on.
Stories, once buried, issue from our hands:
'Are the stars merely spare-change coffee,
and Heaven the tramp who never buys it? '
If it's time for harsh words,
we've heard them and survived it.

But...something...here in our lives together,
(it's probably just a delusive daydream...)
is shimmering, racing, spinning like a blade
in a ghostly machine.

It's probably just the
phantom of a lovestruck spruce,
protecting us from risk,
by plunging into the
sawblade's tooth,
before we initial that carved-on desk.

Or, no...if the truth be known -
it's probably just a covert World,
as fiercely alive as a revolving star,
and each hiding place
is nostalgia for this,
the secret machinery
of revealing who we are.