The Lighthouse

Passing years round sharp corners of absolutes,
and like the hot iron gliding across my plaid
shirt, smooth away unwanted memories, erase
them as if they never existed.

Intractable time.  Solicitous time that uses the
sharp knife of experience to strip away layer
after layer of counterfeit certainty until the
pebble size core is exposed to the scrutiny
of honesty.

In the cellar of my consciousness, far back
in the shadowed recesses, a tender flame
dances with a liquid shadow, back and forth,
bending and swooping, tormenting time,
not as a statement of "maybe" or "perhaps"
but as a defiant "yes!"

So this is how it works?
As the sun drops low over the Santa Catalinas,
I leave aside the debris of doctrines and the
certainty of creeds, unbendable absolutes
melt, and my voracious ego devours itself
as the last barrier to the little dancing flame
in the shadowed corner of my knowing.

Time is now both adversary and appealing
adventurer.  Time is the appraiser of belief
and the host of honest reflection.  In the
rear-view mirror of my almost eightieth 
decade, I see the highway strewn with
the corpses of untenable theses but when
I look ahead, do you see it?, there on the
horizon, that little dot of light.  It is the
lighthouse of my awareness.  And with all
the scars of humility and the bruises 
acquired along the way, I call out to the
Keeper of the Light:  "I know!"