More or Less

Living in a bustling world

flesh, blood and convoluted

Distant, the barren silence

where essence is rooted

More varied in nature,

than god and less near

Rarely in an image

of something crystal clear

More exuberant,

more immediate,

less austere

With oh, much confusion

and far, far greater fear

Beyond your drab conceptions

of truth grand and dear

With faith in independence

firmly held and sincere

Knowing all too well it must

finally disappear

With gentle death

‘Cause in the end there’s nothing, more or less

Finding signs in lover’s eyes

and in the words of men

Then finding peace still missing

to begin that search again

Hard science lights a candle,

in the blackest night

A path thru superstition

to dim future, fully bright

Intuition demands trust

in only reason’s might

Ever mindful of the distance

from delusion to insight

With blessed frequent respite

in romance’s lambent light

Desire’s fleeting nature

renders passion no less bright

There’s cause in creativity

and money’s a delight

But no final solution

to our appetite

For stress

For in the end there’s nothing, more or less

The detective’s on the trail

but the query found the sleuth

Seeking for the core suggests

a proof of the truth

It turns out that its name

means nothin’ to me

When called spirit

then all is spirituality

If we look for mind,

consciousness is all we’ll see

Name it god or love,

you’re really still not free

Words trapping the experience,

to separate it from me

What finally snaps the chains

of that verbal slavery

Is only this,

In the end there’s nothing more or less

The world appears a riddle,

a perplexing maze

And god is even more so,

or so reason seems to say

Complications of existence

weigh me down

Ten thousand separate jewels

in the lords crown

Ten thousand souls

in ten thousand towns

Awaiting his coming,

knees bent to the ground

Hands uplifted,

faces facing down

When that gentle laugh

drew my attention ‘round

Emerson’s voice, in my ear,

a blissful sound

Gem-like phrases resonate,

celebrate

and resound

To teach and bless

That in the truth, there’s neither more nor less

With feet on this dusty road,

and no sight of start or end

The horizon stretched before us,

highway without a bend

More vast than we can grasp,

we behold the view

The horizon doesn’t hold the truth,

the road itself is true

To try to understand we can,

dissect the avenue

Sift through countless qualities

searching for a clue

Faith and hope and charity,

kindness and virtue

Shatter its workings tenfold,

concepts to help imbue

Our inkling of a world

we somehow already knew

Or take in thirds life’s nature

to help the mind lasso

By body, soul and spirit,

a creator’s parts and glue

Or split truth down the middle

to help the mind construe

The nature and the meaning of

nature’s cosmic review

Good and bad, death and life,

divide the truth in two

Still all these fractions from,

one single essence grew

At some point all the splintered parts

must collapse into

One heart, one mind in concert

the divisions can undo

In quietness they coalesce

‘Cause in the end there is no more nor less