To Name is Not to Know

To know a thing

Is to surrender to the mystery

Of not knowing

To grasp at the infinite edges

Of the imponderable

I have been a student

Of myself

For all these years

And a good one at that

And still

Can I say with any truth

That I know myself?

Those who name a thing

Can never know it

A name is a vessel

A cartoon

Cartouche

Pointing to a thing

But not the thing itself

The map is not the wilderness

Or the way

But gives a framework

To understand in part

To acknowledge that we are all lost wanderers

So it is with me

And you

And us

And all things

And the things that are not

For we only know what we can sense

Even the knowing of our limitations

Is itself

A mystery

So let me sink into your darkness

Let me know you as deeply as I can

And yet

Behold the vastness

Of what cannot be mined for truth

Of what cannot be held

Or examined

But only known

In abandonment

Of the need to figure out

Only known

In the hollowness of names

And identities

And bodies

And roles

For we know in part

But what are parts

When the whole is beyond all measure?