~JAMES R. WHITLEY~

POSTCARD FROM ORBIS TERTIUS
(after Borges, Wittgenstein)

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Everything I own is here with me now.
Every happiness I have ever known
must exist presently as well.
The mind is the key to it all.

What is past is merely dreamed,
nothing painful sticking to the slick
surface of the actual.

And what could happen—
the possible repair of a leaking roof,
a panoramic dawn as I rise—
is but mere fantasy.

This is all there is:
all that my mind will take in—
my restless body and shaking hand,
this ink pen and how it works with me.

Here, I see only myself, standing alone
atop steep hills, in the present, sometimes
an illusion of you imagined for yesterday,
a dream of you pondered for tomorrow—

you, whom I refer to as merely
the-glittering-once-thought-to-justify-my-living,
the-ending-after-which-my-breathing-yet-continues.
 
 

© by James R. Whitley