Knowledge That No One Wants Poem by James McLain

What I am, what you are not, what you need and what I want, that you do not appear to have.

The stars above do not pretend,
Their light is truth that will not bend.
But hearts, like mirrors clouded fast,
Reflect a world that cannot last.

I am the quiet, the silken dusk,
You are the fire, the sunlit husk.
Your need is hunger, a ceaseless tide,
While I am the stillness you cannot abide.

Wisdom waits in ancient streams,
Yet innocence burns in fragile dreams.
I sought the peace your waves destroy,
And you chased storms for fleeting joy.

Lost in you, I became the sea,
A tempest wild, no anchor free.
You skimmed my surface, blind to all,
The depths where wisdom's voices call.

Skin to sky and sky to skin,
We met as strangers meet the wind.
The waves betrayed, the skies forgot,
What I am, what you are not.

What I want is neither yours to hold
Nor mine to shed like tarnished gold.
For truth, like water, slips away,
Yet leaves its salt to mark the day.

And so, we drift, both bound and free,
A sky, a wave, eternity.