Telling the Truth

Through hazy unknowns
life tumbles, turns
I wake far from home
not knowing how or who
I’m to be

I search for long-gone milestones
landmarks north stars
The sky an empty void
of echoing questions
no answers
no explanations
no solace

I wander between knowing what I
think I know and fearing this
could be true
Truth so fragile
so easily pierced by life’s urgent
need for me to be
someone I am not

Life itself a great puzzlement of
interlocking pieces
leading somewhere
or nowhere
I’m never quite sure
A little light
a little meaning
a little distance
from the void of not knowing

Will this come round right?
Every book every scrap of history
every letter every pain
every sorrow every shame
every secret
wells up in me
competing for attention
Pick me!
I hold the key to golden answers
Can you help me find my way home?

I first published this poem on 30 July 2015. Today, two years later, it still rings true. Perhaps more so, given the last USA presidential election and all that happened before and since then.

I could smile and say God will work it all out, but that feels like abdication. A denial of my shared responsibility as a human being and as a citizen.

All promises to the contrary, my world was never safe or secure. Today I know that what passed back then for ‘safe and secure’ was, in fact, a mirage. Sometimes deliberate; sometimes the product of years of denial. Or false hope that saying something often enough would make it real.

Fake news is fake news. Fake history is fake history. Fake solutions are tomorrow’s problems passed on to the next generation.

Today we’re reaping a whirlwind that’s been in the making for centuries. No magic key will solve all our dilemmas. Still, I’m going to keep picking at the lock—one person at a time, one conversation at a time, one day at a time.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 8 August 2017
Image found at gizmag.com