Brian’sPoems

Exiles

...wanting to return.

When we are unconscious
we live in a world of ideas,
all of them flimsy and fleeting,
ready to disappear into emptiness
the moment we close our eyes.

If sleep does its job,
it skillfully unwinds
and strips away
our petty intellectualism,
then wakes us
frightened and uncertain,
staring into the darkness
unable to form words
or to catch our breaths.

Listen to the elderly
and to the babbling babies
at the doorways to this world.
They see and know
things we’ve long forgotten.
We are not exiles on this rock.