I excavate cerebral strata

superceded sentiments

abandoned answers buried by
bold questions like Vesuvius
erupting until covering
all corners of my Pompeii mind.

I comb through rubble, relics, rot
excavating artifacts

the toppled columns of conjectures

glassy shards of hard beliefs

worn cornerstones of calculations

decaying reasons in debris.

Collapsed foundations clog the soil:

how groundlessly I used to toil
querying and quarrying

constructing wonders
stages

walls

between the secret and the shown
or what it was I should have known.

This province of my ignorance
ran further than I recollect

(a legacy of retrospect
nobody could bestow but me).

The world felt compact in my hands;

so little I had grasped
back then.

In any inch seek history:

gnarled trees of logic I dare scaled

each branch expressive of division
splitting into strange conditions

motley leaves of contradictions

vague silhouettes of inclinations

captivating vacillations

riven limbs to revelations
rarely fathomed
up or down

beyond the arches of conceit
felled by theories
incomplete

enigmas weathered
to no edge

the implications past the hedge.

I climb above a crumbling ledge,
survey my bygone realm of myth

my fabricated Camelot

sword ascending

me pretending
to be him, the fabled knight
whose asking spares the wounded king
and saves the wasteland from its plight.

Or I played Faust
infernal fool
who barters his eternity
for knowledge wrought of vanity.

Promethean
I sought to be
endowing the creative flame
necessitating sacrifice,

if only one
may pay that price.

Odysseus, another name:
he's partly me, I tend to think
absorbed by stories,
oceans, and time,
yet persevering in return
to only what will matter most:

fidelity and love divine.

Each contemplative odyssey
delivers me near intersections:

new truths criss-crossing old deceptions

futurities
antiquities

my shadows angled at the night.

There's graduation from the ruins

small degrees
toward dawning sight:

more golden mornings born of light!