within the tempest-tossed sea. . .

consciousness

consciousness:

what a mystery, 

to rise to where the abstract is real,

and we can consider the cosmos

and all the different places within it,

do we humans need to feel unique?

or are we less lonely if we’re on a continuum,

is the pressure on us less then?

the self can achieve a vantage point

where it becomes aware of itself,

as different, individual,

able to realize that that in the mirror

is a self distinct from the other,

others cascade in upon our awareness

and make us larger, and, also, somehow smaller,

each of us able to make decisions and feel different,

able to follow a path we at least seem to choose,

then how do we make each decision?

somehow feelings rise up in us

and claim the speaker’s staff,

the right to decide,

much of our brain like a computer 

which needs a programmer,

a part of us to rise to program our decisions,

we feel the programmer to be from the heart,

really whatever the part of us 

that feels more surely than thinks,

my emotions are as a tempest-tossed sea,

swells toss me up into a clarity and rightness of the light,

and drop me down into anxious doubt in the darkness

that waves high above me,

I am who I am,

but it is devilishly hard to know just who that is.

by Henry H. Walker

September 11, ‘18