The Room of Unknowing

1.

The room is immense, and filled with ghosts.
There is no special time — for all we know,
it may have always been like this.

We are moving aimlessly about in the dark,
occasionally brushing against each other.

Mostly blind in any case, we imagine
things, creating stories in our minds.

We don’t see the room for what it is,
but only as a stage prop in our story.

Simple things may be happening, but we
make them complex, to fit with our idea.

Our idea is that we are solid, we are here,
we aren’t sure where that is, but wherever
it is, here we are — real, solid, present.

We don’t realize we are dreamers inhabiting
these ghost bodies, we prefer our own stories.

There are innumerable twists and turns to our story,
though we always end up where we began —
relieved of any knowledge, a figment in the dark.

Sometimes we seem to drift out of our story,
out of the big room, but we have merely entered
a larger room, a truly immense room.

If there is any light there, it is our own light.
We go to it, relieved of any knowledge.

There is a door in the light, we pass through it
to another room, a room filled with ghosts.

There is no special time there, and we are
moving aimlessly about, occasionally
brushing against each other.

2.

Exhausted by the weight of memory,
attention folds into the oncoming night
like a prayer card one might absently slip
into their coat pocket at a relative’s funeral
while pondering mortality and mortgages.

That stiff coat will then be hung in the back
of the closet until the next solemn death event
requires the proper uniform for social grieving,
for being physically present for those no longer
in need of our presence, our perfunctory prayers,
our already-fading memory cards to imagination.

Where have they gone?

The room is immense, and filled with ghosts,
transparencies who’ve folded into the shadows
to unpack their own memories, vaporous memories
which are now as weightless as they themselves
have become, mere feathers on the luminous
breath of some forgotten god, gently blown
into the long night’s gracious oblivion.
There is no special time there.

For all we know, it may have always been
like this: a door in the light, and we pass
through it to another, larger room.

If there is any light there, it is our own light.
We will go to it, relieved of any knowledge.

The light will liberate all ghosts, yet to itself,
is it anything other than the luminous breath
of some forgotten god, so gently blown
into a long night’s gracious oblivion?