Is it simply human
to insist we understand
the world into which we were born?
Infants sometimes understand this
better than adults.
They explore with little animal bodies,
trusting everything, fearing very little.
Is fear inculcated by adults
trying to keep the world safe
while feeling fragmented themselves,
constricted by demands and rules
that rarely soothe fear at all?
We learn while young
to trust knowledge
to carry us forward,
to give us answers
to life’s mysteries.
Yet mystery persists
throughout recorded history
for a reason.
There are simply things
we cannot reason out.
So we file off to churches and schools
which, in themselves,
are neither good nor bad.
Life and death are givens,
yet mysterious —
forces over which control
is ultimately meaningless.
They can enlarge the lens
through which we view reality,
or narrow it
in hopes of excluding
the things that scare us witless.
Still, no system of thought
has ever fully dissolved
the great human bewilderment.
Nature is the only school I trust
to be completely honest
and completely unknowable
at the same time.
I have spent a lifetime
learning to negotiate with it:
the ocean’s changing currents,
the weather,
skies constantly shifting,
underground networks
my eye cannot see,
yet those my carefully tended gardens
depend upon.
All of life is mystery.
A conclusion I have come to
through experience,
but also through literature
stretching back
as far as humans have written.
We either learn to accept
or push against
what is.
I can look out my window now
at the neighbor’s untended landscape,
gone feral —
arms of shrubs shooting off
this way and that,
blocking much
of the ocean view
we still enjoy.
In truth,
there is little I can do
but surrender
to circumstances
beyond my control.