Trying to Hide, Yet Understand It

I have nowhere to hide.

The sycamore, ash and maple

have dropped their bountiful clothes

leaving only the vacancy of open sky

among scant limbs and lichen.

If I could sing a song of despair, I would,

enlisting the voices of Diana or Pan,

the light tripping feet of sprites

who might give me a place among immortals

to lay out my arguments for the troubles of my heart.

But there is only the cool winter air,

the face of the November half-moon,

the soulful conversations between two owls,

or the raucous meters among ravens,

and I am left absolutely alone in thought,

as are we all in such semi-dark moments.

Am I or am I not given permission by my self

to converse with each molecule of my body

as if they all had speech and opinion as to life

and to the machinery thereof?

Are the facile questions of my mind

up to the profound responses from my DNA?

There are the comfortable letters from the past,

from Thomas Reid,[1] who cautions us as to the source

of our melancholy and its arm chair postures,

that leave us far too perplexed to think

like the pure animals we are. 

I have no where to hide,

except in the recesses between

the rolling seas of each passing and passed thoughts.

Yes, the leaves of the maple and the ash

have gone to earth, signaling the breathing

of the planet’s heaving bosom, and

signaling my steps,

each one placed this way and that

in ways I should not attempt

too much in the way of serious contemplation.