two chasms below

afoot on the knife edge 

kids can ask me:

“What is your pet peeve?”

sometimes I answer about how

people can be frustratingly ignorant

of the selfish thoughtlessness of an action,

when I get to my deepest value, though,

I answer:

“When people are not real. . .”

when they are not true 

to the authentic richness unique to each person,

life is a series of tightropes

upon which we must dance forward

with two chasms below:

losing ourselves to the other,

stymied as to being an individual

while we are pulled by the group,

and tempted to lose who we are

to the self-indulgent one within,

lost in a hall of mirrors in which

we see nothing beyond our own ego,

my goal is to be like any who move forward,

even while feeling and swaying 

to the pull of both chasms at the same time,

those who refuse to let either Scylla or Charybdis

tempt us away from the odyssey home 

to the best truth possible in this world,

the best way forward is always a knife edge.

by Henry H. Walker

October 30, ‘15