How Can We Ever Know? Poem by RIC BASTASA

i am the tree in the forest of your mind.
if you paint, i am just one of the lines in the canvass.
if you sing, i will only be one of the notes
and if you write, i am but a syllable.

in the same manner, no matter how i tell you
the truth about myself,
in some shadows of the silhouettes of the night
a dark figure in the middle of the dark background
you grope as i make some protrusions on the wall
you feel something and then the object slips like a fish
back into the sea

sometimes i put on my name and you read it.
you say, i am that name, but i laugh, i am not a name.
on a moonlit night, i am that bird flying away.
you lose sight of me like i am a ball thrown by a child
sucked by the night.
on a sunny day, i pretend as one of the petals in your garden
less the smell, you dismiss me as one of those
that you can always afford to lose.

it is funny, you want to know me, and say you value
this getting to know.
it is sad, i am not concrete. I am always as fluid as the river.
as fluctuating as a mirage.

i am the desert. I am the rock.