Licorice

by CWK


Dear! My Dear! Fear none!

It’s always 77 degrees here, and summer’s just begun.

We are only starting, and stumbling’s half the fun.

It’s like, like something hard to explain.

It’s like, like the unexpected kiss of a cool July rain.

It’s like licorice: quite mysterious, not quite sane.

Remember Rembrandt: how did Aristotle gaze!

He looked on Homer, and he contemplated,

and perhaps he felt him a little dated;

what, with the new ideas of his days.

But O, he gazed, he found some powers

that propelled him -- that made him his and ours.

O, you will be sweet, peculiar, perhaps jaded.

This trouble lasts a moment; it too will be dated.

One day you’ll look upon it a bust contemplated.

One day you’ll savour sorrows long faded.

Remember Rembrandt: how did Aristotle brood!

And can we see inside his mind,

and in seeing somehow something good then find?

I cannot tell, his eyes disguise his thoughts too well.

He is perhaps melancholy, lost in introspection;

but he found something, somehow, by looking,

and we will find something sweet,

when all these trails find a brooking,

and at the scenic peak we meet.

Hurry not, nor be ye in haste; you have too little time.

Hurry to hike up the river rock, then slide down the falls.

You will find you loved the climb,

and the waters cool the soul and ease the mind.

Be not afraid of them, nor be ye appalled.

You will be lost where your troubles cannot call.

The rocks are smooth, they will not offend;

so slide, and slip, and speed down a path undefined.

And, yes, the climb is worth it -- especially the end.

Dear, dear, my sweet dear - selah to your troubles.

Yes, they come in droves, or more, and in doubles. 

But troubles, who are they? We are now away.

We are climbing, we are sliding, we are sharing

a taste of licorice: peculiar and contumacious.

Yes, yes, yes, you will live; don’t fret the Devil’s daring.

Slide, Slide, Slide through this temptation;

he who slides to the end at last begins true

to see himself with newness then renewed.

The trail is waiting; why should you refuse to heal?

We will ascend, and then slide down on the cool rocks.

We will be new very soon; we will be very new, and real.