States of Mind:
Confusion
Since I was a child, I have lived like a drunkard
ascending the stair of happiness on a beam of light
animated by the Mixolydian scale,
…it’s how I learned whatever I know.
Questions
Is there a crux here, a fact of the matter, something like a payoff?
Is there an end to what we can know?
Is the universe out there trying to tell us something?
Or is this stare into nothing preparation for what’s to come?
Clarity
We are at heart strangers, waiting,
in a universe conceived without us in mind.
Perfection is out of the question, still,
there is no end to what we can learn.
It is good to love the past, with its unbearable weight
that teaches us nothing, asks for nothing in return.
It is good to love the future, with its unbreakable pull
taking us forward, telling us nothing,
Poetry on the run 
Wonderful. I had to look up Mixolydian. Now knowing what it means, the lines:
ascending the stair of happiness on a beam of light
animated by the Mixolydian scale,
really come to life. Really, that’s fantastic!
I love the overall form of the poem. And that last lines:
It is good to love the future, with its unbreakable pull
taking us forward, telling us nothing,
are amazing!
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Thanks Bob, this started when I had to look up the Mixolydian scale myself after encountering it in someone else’s poem.
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Yes, and I looked up the Mixolydian scale as well. I always appreciate getting some education in music. There is, as you say here, “no end to what we can learn”, and that seems to me to be a source of joy or delight.
I think there is an extra ‘is’ in the line, “Is the universe out there trying to tell us something?”
I love, “Or is this stare into nothing preparation for what’s to come?”. I get a sense of vertigo or am reminded of infinite regress (a term I learned from science, epistemology and calculus tomes I’ve read lately). The idea of “staring into nothing” being “preparation for what’s to come” combined with the line about the universe trying to tell us something, combined with the even later line about the universe being one that “conceived us without us in mind” where we are strangers at heart, reminds me a little of Johnny’s ourobouros and this dizzying feeling of both everything and nothing that pulses at the core of being alive…in the moment…JUST this wobbly mystery that surrounds us.
And I’m producing a lot of run-on sentences right now. I, like Bob, love both final stanzas.
Beautiful.
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Thank you Holly, I am glad you found the joy in that line, as well as the extra ‘is’ in the other line. I am also glad I was able to come to some clarity with a bit of love for the life we have.
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