Fall Reflection: Connection

We are brimming with bonds.

Physiologic connections constitute our being. 

Telescopes, microscopes stared into darkness

And found no match to our complexity

Mind-boggling mesh of synapses, receptors

The id, ego, super-ego

Explanations unsettling in their inadequacy

Mapped in colorful complexity

Still so far beyond our ken. 

Know thyself.

The most ancient phrase.

The most wise.

Know thyself.

What ties you together?

Wives, husbands, mommies, daddies,

First-order bonds, identities

Messy words like love

Conceal as much as reveal.

We pretend to understand each other--

Till confronted by how we have not. 

How distorted our pictures of others

Our gaze fixed on ourselves.

What can refocus, what can refine?

Let thyself be humbled!

Tear that too-strong tie.

Charlatans predate primate relations

Tangle ties meant for tribes

Salesmen's spiderwebs stick 

Stripping the seams of society.

So we must build walls,

We must skepticize,

We must ever say, 

Put me on your no-call list.

Blessed it must not be, 

The tie that binds.

Triggers make connections, but destroy.

Knots can be tangled or clean.

Glue defaces as well as binds

Tape turns on itself.

How fraught, our connections, how fragile

What delicate touch we need with the other

What science, skill, experience, what sensibilities

What an art is love.

Love--
Creaturely, embodied, yet divine

For creatures, others, and the divine.

Our utmost challenge:
Untangle, retie that knot
So blessed can be the tie that binds.