The Sovereign Pursuit

What creature lives within the wanting mind

That sets the soul to chase through trackless thought

Where shadows breed their own infinities

And every path divides before the soul

Can mark its certainty upon the ground

*

I have pursued through forests of my own

Invention where the branches multiply

Like arguments that spiral into mist

The thing I sought was neither beast nor bird

Yet moved with purpose just beyond my reach

*

Some say the chase itself becomes the prize

That motion sanctifies the empty hand

But tell me what philosophy can feed

The hunger that awakens with the dawn

And sends me forth again to seek and fail

*

There was a morning when I came upon

The very clearing where my prey stood

So close I felt the tremor of its breath

Could see the pattern of its peculiar grace

The way it held the light upon its form

*

My hands were steady and my aim was true

Yet in the space between the will and deed

A hesitation small as wingbeat passed

And when I moved the clearing stood bereft

Of everything except my own regret

*

Now tell me scholars seated in your towers

What victory weighs heavier on the soul

The thing possessed that loses all its shine

Once captured and made common by the touch

Or that which got away and stays pristine

Forever fleeing through the mind at night

Forever perfect in its absence there

*

I think perhaps we are designed to want

More than to have and in that architecture

Find our truest nature written plain

For what are we when all the chasing ends

When every specter lies before us dead

And there remains no forest left to search

No trembling in the underbrush to mark

Where something wild and worthy hides from view

*

So let the philosophers debate their truths

While I return again to the green wood

To track whatever ghost or glory calls

My name across the morning and to know

That seeking shapes the seeker in the end