The Question Man

The Question Man

There goes the question man.
See how he walks?
Deliberate, and not like others
...not at all.
His lust, unlike our own,
is for the shadows right and sinister;
they play a different melody
for him. They seem
to sing of soft excursion,
tasting of an eastern shore
already redolent of Asian mystery.

He is the question man...he seeks,
not struts, for wealth is not ahead of him,
but dancing by his side.
How singular his pride of heritage
laid down by books, not blood,
an overwhelming flood of curiosity
that sends him off to islands
where the tradewinds call,
and he may answer with a spirit song.

His prize is in the quest,
his being filled not with desire,
but with the fullness of Matisse,
black hair down to the waist,
bare footprints on the beach,
the crinkled pages placed most carefully
beside the mythic bed, and left there
for a maiden fond of dreaming,
longing for a different strand
another midnight might disclose.

So much for the question man
who walks his magical domain
within the crystal globe upon his desk.
So much for nostrums
in the wake of shipping lanes
that cloud its clarity.
It is the questionning that drives romance,
and not its appetite.
It is the dance unending that will breathe
the tropic splendor of the night
~