A ramble

Life a preoccupation
         with itself
the urge to explore
         and to discover
to cohere and to define
         a world made
in the image and likeness
         of our language
a rose by any other name
         Adam who never left the garden
never fell into the trap
         the absurdity
that the pursuit of knowledge
         could ever lead
to such a dire debacle
         the rose and its ancestors
microbial life that still provides
         the necessary gut feeling
Thirteen ways of observing
          an evolving adult poetics
It’s not about the girl
          much less
about the snake in the grass
          or the thief in the night

Poetry’s no whitewash
         and beauty and truth
are not empty epithets :
         evil is ugliness personified

John Lyons