Pose-Unpose
Is your presentation really the who you are?
Why is being one and real so hard?
The most self-composed pose when eyes are upon them
And unpose in the all alone.
The simplest are more than one, and many several.
A rose, the perfection of flowers
Changes not with company.
Exposed are thorns and fragrance.
What you see, it is.
Not posed but poised in its transcendence.
Be it rich red or snow-shine white,
Morning yellow or dew-dropped apricot.
Twined by cottage gate or mansion tower
It is what it is
A flower among flowers.
She changes not with company
But takes her time and serves her purpose.
And time takes her
From tight bright bud to full bloomed beauty,
Be it morning yellow or snow-shine white,
Rich red or dew-dropped apricot.
Then time comes to depose and let each petal fall.
The rose does not oppose or try to suppose
A pause upon the dying of her display,
To stay the fruition of her purpose.
It was enough to have been
A rose poised in its transcendence.
Lingers still her fragrance.
A long-lifed oak imposes by height and breadth.
Its rugged girth rooted deep within the soil it shades.
Within its widespread, green laden boughs
Move myriads that suck and burrow and chew.
Its floor feeds the forest around.
There is substance enough.
A prowling fox looks up to assure
That no danger is above.
A wide-eyed owl looks down
Searching for bright eyed mice.
A snuffling hedge-hog snuffles out wood-lice,
Scrunches shiny green-backed beetles.
Within the towering column a hundred greedy grubs
Carve out their wooden caverns.
Above on outstretched branch
Pink-breasted doves brood and love,
Their precious eggs posed on a palm-full of little sticks.
A thousand suns may rise and set
Then twenty thousand more
Yet that imposing, life filled oak,
Without an ounce of arrogance,
Has only just begun
To fill its place and say
I am.
Centuries may pass while its form it fills.
Bud break to leaf fall, turn on turn, it displays.
But as with all show through all time, it will at last decay
And in time's crucible fade fade away.
From his mansion tower past the cottage gate
Rode John Kiotay into the forest glade.
First at a canter then at a quiet plod
Then off from his nag the mossy floor he trod.
By an old oak in some pleasant shade
He sat him down to meditate.
This mortal man found himself at a loss to know.
He thought himself a noble beast but it hardly seemed to show.
He thought of fame and excellence and doing what is right.
But all the time unease increased at the dying of the light
At the dying of the light he raged, knowing now he would never be
A noble dragon-slaying knight on this world's stage of history.
The windmills of his mind, around him they did turn.
Kaleidoscoping scenes seemed to swirl and burn.
The parts he'd played, the plays he'd made, the stages of his life.
Strutting words, muttering moods, pompous, futile strife.
Then all the curtained artifice, indeed he saw, did burn
And all the windmills of his mind to dusty ash did turn.
Then from the dying cinders a mournful song did rise,
“To be or not to be?”, a long dead prince did sigh.
In his hand he held a skull, its eyes were blind, its mouth was dumb.
Yet looked he to the empty bone as though within was wisdom.
Then up stood John Kiotay he held his head up high.
“To be or not to be? is not the question!”, he cried.
“What to be? and How to be? and How to belong?
Those are the questions, that's the singing song.
With sighing you lament a fact to which none consent;
Propose or purpose what we will, act with utmost good intent.
Still death falls like a cloak carrying us to a waiting place.
And the flesh left behind, decomposing, leaves no trace.”
“O posing Prince, the singing song is not a one-line dirge.
Melancholy is the dappling of light by life's vast tree
And madness comes when evil storms life's vast sea disturb.
But still goes on the singing song ever strong and free
And great the living company that sings its harmonies.
Among the shadowing branches broods a pink breasted bird
And in the shadowed land the song of the dove is heard.”
There was a crack there was a crunch, there was a whinnying neigh.
On mossy floor, under horse's hoof, a crushed skull bone lay.
“How right you are”, smiled John K to his thoroughbred.
“Enough of jousting windmills and talking to the dead.
On up to the mansion, singing along the way.
For life is a song for hymning when all the saying's said
And death is for the killing, the hero to portray.”
By the cottage gate in the setting sun a man on a horse
Paused to pick a rose.
There was a song he would compose.
It was long but nearly done
But how to close it and unpose
So that the fragrance lingered on?
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