Saturday, September 3, 2011

The fog of unknowing

What if those walls
we build so carefully
between me and not-me;
those fine distinctions
between reality and illusion,
self and reflection,
surface and depth
were all to disappear
in a fog of unknowing?

What if certainty
were left behind
and we stepped out
into her "sprawling darkness
of not knowing,"
(a place of hope, not faith.)


 What if faith --
"so tensile, and so cool,
that has no need of words" --
were more like hope --
"a fighter and a screamer" --
and carried us, not to safety,
but to new understanding,
"where one is less oneself
than a part of some single
indivisible community."

Would this be true:
with all the boundaries gone,
the only thing left to see
would be light?

(All quotes from Mary Oliver, Winter Hours)

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