My Secret Place
My secret place down by the Tay River.
I deer-bed down among the autumn grasses
and last of the New England asters
half-lotus in cowboy boots
with a clear view of the stars
dancing on the water.
The waterlilies have perished.
Jupiter.
And the moon at last crescent.
No one knows I'm here but me.
I've never come here with another.
A place where I talk to the universe alone
as if it existed
more personally
than the mere immensity
of a cosmic intelligence
super-saturating time and space.
Belief's a bad habit of mine
and sometimes I want to be deceived
into believing someone's listening
even when I know they aren't
and that the worst always happens for the best
even though I know it doesn't.
The sky's a windowpane I can fly through
without breaking my neck on delusions
and the moon feels like
a cool poultice on a hot wound.
I watch a spider repair its dreamcatcher
and say good luck.
And the stars don't really give a damn
how they shine deep in my dark inner spaces.
Everything is so perfectly entranced with being itself
I wonder what it is about a human
that has to take time out like me
to reconsider what I'm doing here
wandering around on the earth
without any certain purpose
other than the ones I make up like poems
to spin bedtime stories out of my nightmares.
A birch leans out over the water
like a woman washing her hair in the river
and I sense there's an inevitability about a tree
that isn't like me.
I can't find a fixed reality
to be in harmony with.
I have no doubt the rocks along the shore
are getting it right
but with me consciousness is a light
that contradicts its own clarity
the moment it reveals itself.
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
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