Deceptive Truth From the Sanctuary
by Michael Doyle

Most see the warrior life as fighting and drinking
But the truth of the odyssey is one of thinking
Ulysses was protean and was not easily swayed
Instead, his thinking was fluid and many-wayed
This is the way the world is and how his cards were played

Sailing a ship through life requires skillful navigation
This much, of course, needs no long-winded explanation
To remain vital requires perceiving life in its multiplicity
This moves beyond bedeviling simplicity into complexity
These are things that lead to a life of perplexity

This world shatters expectations and demands we steer
We must approach life by design and defeat our limiting fears
In a word, the story comes to that to live is to think
And to recognize that we are always on the brink
Of new discoveries, and through these finding vital links

Life isn't just about choosing to rule or to submit and obey
It's a far more complex sort of game in which we all play
Knowing who is who is essential in this world of mobility
To find out often consists of questions holding great difficulty
This is all part of the mystery that makes for life's journey

Everyone here is seen as a stranger in the game of identity
A cataract rush of questions flows and causes some anxiety
As fortunes begin with thoughts from our playground minds
Pushing forward in this cycle, concerned of being left behind
The dear Lady Justice is always found in her curious bind

As we gain our feet in life, we find a wall of uncertainty
The only certainty and real rule in this life that has urgency
We were all coldly thrown into this bracing morass of life
Struggling, tired, and desperate for peace, only to find strife
And such peace as we find, is spread thinly with a dull knife

The only control we find is found in making our own decisions
Some will be good; some perhaps bad, all without precision
Allowing this truth is our best and only true path of control
Knowing we can never really know anything frees our souls
Somehow, this acceptance brings the only peace that consoles

In pursuing thought, we see how life can radically deceive
Ultimately, it comes down to our cores and what we can believe
Those things that we draw from that are or have been concealed
Shape into the truths by which our choices are revealed
But we're no longer troubled, and from this trouble, we are healed

This is how we grow from our childishness into our dignity
This storming world of the sea holds its own integrity
Until at last a man acts in ways he perhaps cannot condone
Finding as we do, this understanding leaves us truly alone
And this loneliness, is the only thing, we truly ever own

(c) May 29, 2024   Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved