Image Poem by Christopher Fladd

What, within the why which we are,
leads us to ponder under the stars?
Where we were then is gone now by far,
by ten thousand miles, a billion new stars
away from the place that made us start
to begin the thinking that lead the young heart
to begin the forgetting by drinking at bars.

We convince ourselves, to think aloud
as though our own head was the entire crowd.
But persuasion forgot, and image dilute,
the vibrations in echoes are the whole flute
a reminder to souls that wander disdained
that all that you feel is the image of pain.