The Mind Controls
*A rodent sat atop the cliff of an inlet, its whole life built upon service to an instinct.
Staring down at the rocks upon which a wave rolls,
here the world now makes sense, to the heart, so thoughts sink’d;
‘The tide rolls, the world turns, and the mind too controls.’
There it was, all it knew, thoughts a beast must forget.
The creature, thinking hard, in a mind gone awry, breathing fast, barking loud, as the world falls, alas.
A world made not for life, but for gods left behind,
the realms just a mistake, shattered like broken glass.
Some will claim that a soul makes you one of a kind,
‘but truth lasts,’ says the rat, ‘longer than you can lie.’
The thoughts end, lost to time and the ebb of the tide, wisdom lost, now rendered lost ideas brought to nought.
Where to find pretty wives, tasty bugs, or berries,
but what of awesome truths, off limits to one’s thought?
Things that play on the mind, in grief, deep it buries,
left to fend for itself in a sea of tears cried.
The tears flow, but the legs move forward toward less, lesser things seen before, known by five senses worn.
The pup cries and the rat comes to soothe it’s own heart,
and old food, left behind by those whom evil saw,
drew them near, close to death, in the wood’s safe charade.
Near the grave, souls converge, all made one in distress.
The great warmth the gems glow clarifies such soil’d souls, ‘The tide rolls, the world turns, and the mind too controls.’*
# Notes
Written in 2023, this poem reflects on the nature of reality and consciousness within my book, using the medium of a rodent to convey these ideas. It was written in anapestic tetrameter and has a rhyming scheme of AB CBCA.