Half a Ghost

Narcissus dwells
beside the stream,
content to gaze, and not to be.
In all those wonder years--
consumed in self-indulgence,he
limped through snatches of reality,
joined hands with infant consciousness,
then slipped away into himself.

He's back,
left-brained and prideful,
his image unenhanced and lost
beneath the roily surface of desire.
His seeking is the storm,
the passion clarity denied. So too,
the space for any denizen of paradise
to read the beauty lurking there,
for ego never visited the fathom sanctuary
of compassion and of peace.

His fingers touch the water,
but the universe is far away;
there is no god at all
or even self to smile at him--
no contemplation of a purity he could not know.
Alone, he could not weep.
~