And I Know These of You
And I know these of you.
.
You gather silence to build your home.
You are wise beyond the lies your age tells.
You are the unerring compass to what comforts.
You need conversations more than you know.
That deep inside you love deigns to burst & give.
That what’s hard inside you is ice, which melts - and hardens - and melts again.
That talking to you makes me feel wise about me.
That your foolish heart is rinsed in wisdom.
You gladden me no end, that sight of you.
.
And you are a litany of perchances,
syncing into my happenstance -
an accident finding it’s mean,
a wild compass masquerading as accident.
.
And I know this of you -
that you are a maybe drenched in certainties,
and when tomorrow comes to say goodbye,
you will perforce stay behind
as a shadow, a sadness, as someone
found and lost - and found again,
lost and found - and never lost again.
Musings
One of the unending and unerring charms of knowing people is to know them as flawed people, whose very kinks make them the weird loveable irritating entities, who infuriate us but equally make us caring custodians of them.
The particularities of their weirdness is not meant for history books. It is often no more than the whimsy of habit, the caprice of reaction, or the peculiarity of a stand they take - nothing which takes away from who they are, nothing which requires a shovel to check their depths.
Ever so often, relationships get predicated on these quirks, which are no more, or less, than the ripples on a pond from a wind which decides to blow on it. If we reject the pond, we lose the treasures which lie in its depths.
To know, to understand, to adopt (and adapt to) each other’s quiddities is to have character and latitude, because it entails that we have the ability to look beyond the obvious brass to see the gold inside. And to realise that we are equally flawed and, in our peculiar ways, fun. If only someone could look beyond.
And to meet someone who gives us a glimpse into the gentle and the outrageous, the tangy and the plain, the obvious and the awesome, is to have encountered a whole universe in a person. To reject someone like this because the odd thing makes their heart go a-flutter, or they slurp soup in hideous ways, is the biggest injustice we can do to ourselves. Groan, growl, but persevere. There’s too much richness inside, which would require years to explore, and a lifetime to savour.
More beauties
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the lovable weirdness of people -
All paintings are courtesy of Dolly Dabriwal