Poem - Verity

[kokopelle]

A friend wrote about living life with authenticity. I have to admit that I am struggling with this concept. The dictionary says the adjective authentic means “not false or copied; genuine; real”. This implies that an authentic life is an original life: not a copy, genuine, not false. This is challenging. Very few things are original in this world, and copies can be beautiful and correct. The dictionary fails me. I plumbed the question with poetry and the poem “Verity” was the outcome. Verify is defined as “a true principle or belief, especially one of fundamental importance”. Trueness feels right, much more flexible than authenticity. The poem explores the transition from being lost to how one lives in a state of verity.


Verity
Poem for Day 020 - 20150120

Lack of luggage,
nothing to check
from the wreckage.
The funeral pyre
holds the ashes
of my past lies.
Dark ledger lost
in cremation
of false truth.

The crutch leans
on distant wall
as I walk upright.
What path
to take without
without the map?
My world shifts:
outlier on the graph,
perspective adrift.

Look to the
compass verity
pointing life leeway.
Freedom to move,
limits bound within
fundamentals.
True to self,
beholden to love,
embraced by truth.

I walk with you,
unlikely companion,
destined pairing.
Be my mirror,
reveal myself
in reflection of your eye.
This was meant to be,
our complicity,
my verity.

© 2015. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved.