If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden. —Mark Zuckerberg
In the cave, our histories are shadows
on a wall; our memories rote lessons
that flicker and mutate. Fall and spring,
then and now, captured and interchanged.
Friezes like post cards sculpted to ornament
the grotto, endure, resist decay.
When the shadows dance, we point, open
our mouths, as if for a split second, something
shifts, recalibrates. A glimpse of fire and lathe—
and shadow makers. Forms beyond hope.
Ideas like sirens singing. Cracks in a wall
that luminate, hint at another source: rivers,
flora and bursts of color, starlings with iridescent
wings, shrubs whose roots finger through mud
for something to drink. A world too fluid to dangle
from rod and string. How could we want its ranges, moon,
its chorus marking dawn, its feathered swirl confusing
predators, its messenger’s glad song? Why should we
mind the tether anchoring us; the flame that fixes seasons,
stages night and day, that orients us frontward, ever
frontward, and keeps the constellations in their place?
