An Ear to the Whole

06 November 2025

https://poems.culturing.net/2025/11/an-ear-to-the-whole/

How curious now, having flown so close to reality,
that everyday life is what feels like a dream, and my dreams
feel most real. In a sense I have been underground
long enough, having decorated all of the ornamental chambers
in the cave of my heart. There will be no visitors, and that
is because of a choice that I can't quite regret
though I can wish against its necessity. Fate holds firm,
and my life continues as ever a desolation, lacking the love
that makes life endurable, and lacking it most of all
in my own heart.

--

And yet I have made secret vows, and affirm them
time after time. Can it be that this love could be easy
and dares to be tried, despite all protestations? What hope
can be realized? What interest lingers despite these harsh blows
that would kill a lesser desire? If a love is not battle-tested,
who knows its worth? Are we learning (or proving)
that something here warrants remembrance, that something endures
what no prior love could endure? I would like to think so,
but then there is the rub, because hope can be mother to illusion.

--

And so I must straddle this ambiguity, letting both sides
sing their songs, even when the cacophony drowns out all sense of order,
because neither side will submit. I must gird myself like Odysseus
against the temptation to listen to one side or the other, because both are essential,
and only together will they tell the story
of what has transpired here. Apart each song sings of dejection
and woe, but together their harmony is grander than either alone,
as sweet counterpoint answers dark sorrow with the only possible cure.
To these melodies, then, let us turn, with an ear to the whole
and a promise to hold them in tension, whatever may come.