Human Archipelago

Language is only one island
In the human archipelago,
Stranded on this desert island
The current age longs desperately
For the only other island in view.

Each islander a sole commentator
Making a mental inventory of experience
Mistaking this personal monologue for reality
But where is the audience?
If only
The right word or phrase
Could encapsulate it . . .
This whatever it all is,
Then maybe we’d all be saved.
The word made flesh, right?
Daily rations from the nearby island of Reason are sent over
Never enough to satisfy
Only enough to make the mind more ravenous and wild-eyed
Like a hungry ghost searching for more.

Beyond the view
Of all the telescopes and microscopes
The other islands in the chain
Remain just below the horizon.
Entire civilizations,
Forgotten races,
Settled on them long ago
They may still be there.
These islands have little to do with the brain
Ruled by other organs of perception
They occupy the mysterious regions of the body
Vacated in the quest for assurances
A mass migration of awareness
Assembled in higher locations
Away from the untempered pull
Of our shimmering boundless reality.

To this day
Emissaries arrive ashore
Unrecognized by most
Day and night they are ignored
Even with all their door knocking:
Explained away as aches and pains
Or quirks of brain chemistry
Quickly corralled by words
Phantoms with no substance.

Some folks however have heard their call
For them a journey awaits
Over a rugged and dark sea
Full of tempests and tears
Back into the forgotten territory
Remembered, their limbs are amassed again
And filled to the brim
With a substance that understands no words
But knows everything else.

From there
Beyond this human region
There are numberless island chains
Beckoning to us from the infinite expanse of Being.