Well Poem by Christine Austin Cole

We all go to the Well sometimes,
creeping only to its edge and pretending
that we know what lies at its bottom.
We look inside, but not so long
that our eyes become accustomed
to the dark, and tell tall tales
of shadowy monsters
that never were and never will be
anything more than mere
shadows of ourselves
dancing on the walls
of that deep, deep Well.

I have been that kind of blind.

For a time, I tiptoed relentlessly
to the Well, wearing a path to and fro –
my fingertips poised in the air,
ready to channel the lightning,
daring the storm of words,
eager to fill the page. But,
I told my story in quasi-rage, spinning
quixotic tales of shadow-monsters
in such tragic little squeals
that even to me,
they seemed real.

I have suffered my own delusion.

Confusion can become its own
answer when one is not prepared
to acknowledge the honesty
of any possible alternative.
In the cradle of morning and
in the twilight of everyday,
we stray away from the rim,
leaving the truth to simmer
in its own juices at the bottom
of that Well. Victims mostly
of ourselves, we dare to peek inside
only when the sun is high.

I have felt that un-brave some days.

We crave exactly that which we
deny ourselves – to know and tell
the truest of truths – but we begin
and end our journey to it,
time and again, moving in circles
going, always, in the wrong direction.
We are story tellers with no stories
to tell but those concocted
of half steps into our fears’ imagination.
To tell the truth, I suspect
what we fear most
is depth.

I’ve hung myself from that ledge.

Slipping from the edge, screaming
with accidental clarity, I offered
myself, wholly, to the darkness
that was once the black of fear.
After years of running away
when the sun fell down – I found
my answers, my truest truth,
when I let myself fall, careless.
And here, in the dark, in the mid
of night, at the bottom
of that Well -
I am fearless.

I have heeded the shadows’ call.

Hell, we all go to the Well sometimes
but most of us only in broad daylight,
never reaching in deep enough
to grope beyond the shadows,
into the darkest dark
where the truth lies waiting -
satisfied with creating illusions
of a truth that never existed.
The truth is,
more precisely, what
we’ve resisted.

I choose, instead, to dwell within.

Oh, we’ve all been to the Well, most of us
like timid children afraid of the dark,
most often only to run away
at fall of day when the shadows
become the monsters
we think we see inside.

Ah, but Truth alone
is the monster
that cannot be denied.

~

Yes –
we all go to the Well sometimes…
but only the lucky
fall in.