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The Philosopher's Study

A very average room, in a standard terrace house:
the welcome sunlight- ruthless though -
truth itself come down to earth -
reveals that the windows
could be cleaner; yet,
could be dirtier;

shows up the gentle layer of dust –
gentle in its fall, not gentle in its mercy – and
not rising from the earth, but
falling invisibly over time
from the ceiling whose last decorator
used a paint less than the best;
who ever invited dust?
But here it is, inviting in its turn
a passing twinge of guilt; it could be
a metaphor for the philosophic:
dust the mind occasionally,
time brings complacency
and thoughts grow stale,
minds decline…

to a stranger or interior designer
or feng-shui expert, all too cluttered;
too many books for home improvement mags;
not books horizontal, but books vertical;
one could remember how each comes to be there;
for its owner, convenience; occasionally
the slight annoyance of a book urgently sought
(I mistyped ‘ungently’ there..)
requiring the careful craft of extraction
from far down in some tottering pile…

here’s beauty of the mind
for those with mind to see;
and today, the early pale green leaves
from the trimming of the Japanese maple,
every single leaf looking as if it had been bred
by centuries of Japanese devoted to the belief
that man and nature, hand in hand,
may reveal a beauty beyond both –
each leaf tilted delicately towards you as if
as a host bowing modestly in welcome at the door -
these few leaves take your humbled breath away.

In this place, the world itself:
‘infinite riches in a little room’;
as above, so below; as without, so within:
here, heaven and earth, all, open to question;
here is the human mind at home;
meditating; dreaming; waiting in patient hope
like those humble maple leaves
for some new idea to enter,
to expand the loved, mysterious,
boundless glory of the world which constantly
threatens to shrink all to a tiny, wizened, unwise thing;

while unexpectedly at any time may come
a poem, interrupting the philosophy,
to say the things that have not yet been said.

poem by Michael Shepherd
Added by Poetry Lover
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