Differing Modes

Are we made to function properly?
Wound up and loosed to run until the
a spring relaxes and says,
“That’s it, we’re done?”

Are we made for more:
possibilities, impossible to describe
until we’re in them,
more truly, until their done
and even then, escaping description
since they’re not quite done with us?

We’d like to take up a plan
with a few fields of expertise
and be experts ourselves in one or more.
Then the key that wound us up
could stand up straight and boast
“That was worth the effort—
the force of tightening the spring.”

Still, we’d also like to find
the mysteries dancing between
the facts and whispering to the key
“You really had no idea, did you?”
We do not master them, these mysteries;
they move us.

In truth, we yearn for both modes.
Eyes are for threading needles
for sorting out ripe from rotten.
But just as surely, are they not
for beholding delights as they beckon our gaze
colors, lines, and curves that thrill
brains that let go, soar, swoop, and free-fall
in the currents from who knows where?
—DWP, August 1, 2022