There was overarching solace in the greying of the day
as diurnal irritations came unwound.
And my bedroom walls were sentinels of quiet to my mind:
every worry fell like snowflakes to the ground.
As the beach forbids the ocean, or the mountains stop the sky
from progressing past a predetermined line
so humanity’s dysfunctions were prevented in their push
to invade these sacred bedroom walls of mine.
Oh, I love my human brothers, and my sisters hold my heart,
but we often simply rub each other wrong.
And perception and perspective are misnamed and misapplied
to the shrill directive “WE must get along!”
As the quiet worked its magic, and I yawned the world away,
I could sense beneath the common tones of man
that my bedroom walls were speaking to each other in the dark,
so I held my breath and listened for a span.
And I wondered for a moment what these bedroom walls would say
in recounting what they’d seen and what they’d heard.
Such proximity, I thought, was almost certain to ensure
commonality of thought and mind and word.
And the southern wall was windowed, with her eyes upon the world,
while the western wall held portraits of the past.
There’s a door that opens eastward, and a closet to the north
where I keep the treasures safe I hope will last.
But the walls began to squabble, and the North began to whine
that the sunlight from the South had made him fade.
And the shallow southern wall lashed out in envy at the North
for his depth had left her sullen and afraid.
While the West extolled the virtues of the history he held
and the East could see the future through her door,
yet the two talked past each other in an ever-rising spat–
in the end they were not speaking anymore.
Then my solace turned to sadness, and my evening turned to ire:
this quartet who each should call the others friend
found that all they held in common was inadequate, and they
let perspective come between them in the end.
But as chatter turned to murmurs, and my ears grew sharper still,
I could hear a sound I hadn’t heard before–
a duet of such enchantment that I cocked my ear to hear
it was coming from the ceiling and the floor!
“There is greater truth illumined in a single shaft of sun
than in all the dusty dirty tomes of man.
There is greater mercy offered in a single drop of rain
than was manufactured here since time began.
“When perspective’s horizontal, the inevitable end
is a dark morass of hurt, deceit, and lies.
Such a view is almost certain to miss out on brighter things
like the verdant earth and ever-soaring skies.
“If men turn their face to heaven with their feet upon the earth
and their arms stretched out in love on either side
so ensconced in this Creation and endeared to man and God,
they will find no room for greed, conceit, or pride.”
So I lay upon my pillow, and I pondered what I’d heard
as I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.
The advice that had been offered by the ceiling and the floor
was an eloquent perspective I could keep.
—
© 2018 Kenn Henry