Unknown Souls
How do you know a soul, he wondered
It was the start of a new day
Temperate weather had become rain-sodden
He could look out the window and imagine rain
He did not know if his eyes were at fault
Of if the windows needed washing
But he allowed himself to feel a sense of rain
Why not
What mattered weather anyway
Ah, there was climate change
He’d lived in NYC going on nine decades
And saw it all as a lost collection of fragments
Were he a Proust he would be most defective
He would have to title his great work
“Ambient Fragments of a Forgotten Past”
Oh, he could imagine scenes that might have once been real
Not even remembering the cause of such presumptions
He knew he had nurses and was taken places
Strange yet fascinating
Ecclesiastical darkness
Candles perhaps
He could not remember
He could not for the life of him recall
If he could not remember real events
How might he know Souls
At his age most persons from his past
Were long gone
Long gone Souls
They had all passed on
Oh, he believed it
A vast and growing assemblage
Of every being he had ever been
Wherever life was situated
These Souls were closer to him now
Than all the living, breathing folk he saw
And yet he had never seen,
Even in imaginal realms
More than fleeting glimpses of fleeting forms
Coming by fast
That was how he knew there really were dimensions
There in the tiny glimmers he was seeing
The images moved by at warp speed
Different than dreams
More vague
Blurred and unreal
And yet he could accept these paltry tokens
As intimations of realms he would one day see
He would occupy them
It was written
And then there were clear prospects of improvement
He might improve his Soul awareness
Maybe elicit telepathic
Sentiments
Could he do that
How did he know
He didn’t
They were there
He was merged with them
Known
Some unknown
Names gathered daily from his travels
Sylvia Plath
Charles Dickens
Da, the nurse at Dartington
And Westbury
Oh, he traveled everywhere
And what was there he might not know
At least today
Nothing
He would know nothing
And yet all he needed was at hand
Here
Available
How blissful existence is
What do we need
Nothing
But the purest gifts of transient forgetfulness
