Strange Wells Poem by Smoky Hoss

We stop in places we don't know;
we drink from wells of water we
aren't sure of;
we have our fill -
We thirst still.
The desert is hot and dry, and
we never really understand
what we want anyway -
Our boots fill with sand.
Our heads with hurt.
Our hearts overheat for things we miss,
-yet don't even know we are missing -
A longing unexamined, unexplained,
mostly, for something never seen
never known
never quite left behind...
Souls are hard to find
-if they exist at all-
but, they last far longer than feeble bodies
that try to control them.
Bodies fade away.
Souls have no 'no's' to say.
Heads, and hearts pray, so easily forgetting
yesterday's tomorrows, today-

- Nobody asks my opinion
on matters of depth
anymore.
The answers take too long perhaps,
(I like to think before responding) .
Maybe it's because they don't
give a damn anyway
to words anyone else would say...
Perhaps that is for the best;
if they listen minds may blow,
souls topple,
hearts shrink,
spirits within bodies collapse... and God knows
I don't want to be responsible
like that, ever again-

- So, we part, on good terms mind you,
I, like Jesus, walk through a desert, alone,
following the Wind's call.
Occasionally I stop and drink
from a strange well, again...
it quenches my thirst, if only I
can be allowed to take the time to think
before I speak.
Maybe all of our minds need to be blown
and souls toppled now and then
away from the dried up thrones
of our own making; and
our hearts shrunken down below
our own self-agrandizations.
- There are many wells to drink from,
many thirsts to be quenched,
many a heart and soul dry with longing;
we drink a little here,
sip a bit there,
and still we thirst...
We pray to come back together, beyond
the desert, beyond shallow wells,
beyond thirst...
We hope to learn to listen, to wait,
to hear, to speak, well...
Together we know where the Water is;
it's together, we must go...