Horseman

I haven't been to the valley

but the prophet says I will

someday.

  

So does the battered book,

which had predicted the moors,

green lumps of rolling earth,

I wish I could say it was like

finding the needle in the saddlebag.

  

I am certain, till reason becomes

my jailor. Who is more wise,

the scientist or the preacher?

  

Both, it’s hard to say.

  

Physics tries to explain miracles,

how the world came to be,

till the next cataclysm.

  

You are defined by what I am not,

like everything turned inside out,

so the windmills gyrate.

  

And it’s the horseman who will ride

over the rolling moors.

  

Process notes: A poem whose landscape took off from Gorden Lightfoot’s “Don Quixote” with borrowed words, “saddlebag”, “battered book”, “prophet”, “moor”, “earth”, “jailor”, “needle”, “preacher”, “horseman”, “windmills”. As a reader, you may infer meanings from the poem, but really it’s as much your construct as my poem is one. Borrowing from physics, we are each “pocket universes” in a megaverse of diversity. In other words, there is not just one universe (as it seems) but multiple universes, and as “pocket universes” we’re each in our own valley in the cosmic landscape. I’m not sure if my process notes illuminates the poem. If it does not then it’s fine. Because the universe is a mystery and a paradox, and you know, each universe has its own law of physics anyway.

Poem for We Write Poems prompt: Make Your Own Wordle based upon self selected words from Gorden Lightfoot’s “Don Quixote” lyrics.