The Shine Journal

Pass for True, Pass for Know   

by

Eric Halliwell

       
I like the old ways:
to do the dance then decide
for how rhythms flow
or if they don't and when 
they don't they do

for yet showing through
the light upon the issue
the merely more of which must always
(in this Icarus precarious universe)
pass for true, pass for know.

Motivation: What I'm trying for here is to put in some perspective the complicated philosophical issues that plague metaphysicians which to me includes poets and mystics etc.  And in my judgment it's more an issue of artistic feel than something transferable through say scriptures or other left brain oriented explanations, which to me are not at all what I am seeing, or more precisely feeling; which as beloved cummings used to emphasize, was first.  So basically I am equating metaphysics and by extension truth or what can be known with a pragmatic you 'll know it by the feel of it by its rhythm by its reaction in yoiur heart, etc. rather than any external touchstone.   And also to assert that there is no absolute truth just as there is no world champion beautiful poem.  And anyway, it 's a matter of successive approximation.

Bio: Carpenter, half a nurse, finally, school teacher.  Then Eric chucked it for a Guatemalan lake, and poetry.  Eric imprinted on poetry when he heard Yevgeny Yevtushenko say poems were ambulances.  Ironically then, for Eric, E.E. Cummings reprised his world war one ambulance driver role.  Eric's poetry has appeared in Gentle Reader, Penwood Review, Ascent Aspirations, Word Catalyst, and  Umbrella.

Image by: Edmondo Dantes