An idea that I love--

I found a phrase in D&C 76:94 that I just loved--". . . and they see as they are seen, and know as they are known. . . "   Alas, so much more succinct than my poem.






Let me make myself perfectly clear.


As clear as dew distilled on the blade
           its tiny lens of heaven suspended
                    and dangling like an aerialist.
As clear as fast water
          scrubbed clean and flavored by stones
          and carrying their ancestral hymn 
                    in rushing whispers.
Clear as spring water
          seeping through subterranean veins and capillaries,
          pumping through the world's dark heart.


I would be clear as the vagabond stream.
Clear as spring rain.
Clear as still water in deep pools.
          All my sediment--
                    the dregs, the dross,
                              the dead things,
                    the residue of love 
                    the filmy carcasses of loss--
                                        settling at last to silty rest,
          to leave me glassy smooth and open
                    to the wild blue yonder.


Let me be perfectly clear.
It's not negation I crave.
Not obliteration,
          not nothingness,
But clarity.


To be without ulterior motive
To shed the quirks, the charm,
          the juts and jags,
That singular selfhood I've conjured
          and gathered round me in swirling eddies;
                    the flotsam like a magician's robe
                              of glitter, of clink, of slash.
I would shed the self I've so vigilantly crafted of clutter,  
          the self I've tended,
                    I've mended and defended--
                                        this me I've made.
And be clear.