knowing

There was a time I used to know
things in my inward heart, things
that only those you read know.

I don't know how I figured them out
but I had a few good years in which the world
revealed itself to me, cracked open like a clamshell.

I knew what gods know and
it all made sense, somehow.
I guess I was alone back then, so things were
simple; I was a quiet, lonely country.

When I started to know people better,
and love, I stopped understanding many things
or at least, I forgot thinking about them so much.

An intrepid messenger in me needed
to know about the warm craftings of others, and although
much of me revolted, scared
of how our serenity might be troubled,
he was determined and brave, so eventually
I readied my ships and we set out.

I live on a massive, shifting continent now. No longer
is my home a small crystalline bubble
suspended in bright space. There is color here and
such life! But still, often

I want to return to that place of knowing
that I still reach sometimes, only at the most
heady moments of conversation with a new
friend, one whose eyes show me they knew things too,
once, and perhaps still might.

O, once
I lived in a place unlike any; it was populated
by only myself
and my great thoughts.