Poem: Discontented (Beyond the Plateau)

You spoke of how death is not the end
And how everything is somehow right,
But that if everything were all to end today
It still would be a sad and tragic loss.
I spoke of the value of discontentment,
How I was disabused of the plateau vision of life.
How the achievement of one goal
Means the death of that dream
And becomes the birth of new dreams
And new strivings, new fears, new satisfactions.

*

We see how change is always the mode,
That no die is eternally cast, even after death.
For the unchanging is the not-alive
Of which there is really no such thing.

Well, the Platonic ideal is understood
As the unchanging form behind appearances.
But this form is only apprehended
By an infinitude of changing minds.

Skin is membrane,
And each identity, too.
Other realities mix with our own,
Changing us but leaving us
Ever ourselves.
And the old me is the new me is the old me,
Now and then and then and now.

M. Bogen
2000/2024