Enchanted is what they are,
the autistic.
All around us, angels, spirits,
divine brightness, rescuers of the missing,
the forlorn, the poor, the felled and falling.
In this world, we call civilization,
They are the living beams,
the brittle boned
Bringing us gradually `round to ourselves.
There are the disbelievers,
the cynics.
Those that try the patience of good souls,
those who stare in slack jawed awe
at disparity, at oddity, at the brightness
of their own ignorance. I suppose they
cannot help but gawk or scoff;
untrained of such clarity in a world gone mad.
If they but look beyond themselves,
wipe the steam from their lenses,
peer beyond the misgivings and murkiness
of the humdrum streets they haunt…
They would, if they knew what they were missing.
It’s the silent truths, like newborn fawns in the morning light,
Stumbling awkwardly, eyes opening brand new,
Searching their way to the fore of the earth,
The one we’re granted, the one we reduce to nothing
When we stare and laugh at the things that mystify.
When we bellow and berate our own pitiable reality
Met with a light that can do us no harm,
It is we who embody the strangeness we fear the most.
Shall we accept ourselves this way
Or shall we recognize the face of our faltering beast?
They scatter their tracks for us to follow.
Let us go forth and smile with them.
© 2008 mrp/tpm
