[MD] The Center

[Platt Holden]

The Center

You don't see it so much as feel it
When a baby smiles
The wind blows hard
A lover touches your fingertips

You know it's there in
The velvety darkness of a starry night
The soft pedals of a rosebud
The light cast by a child's eyes.

You feel it all around
There in a melody
Over there, in a crashing wave
Over there, where puppies play in the sunshine.

You want to grasp and hold it, but it stays elusive
Avoiding labels and categories
Avoiding reason and rhetoric
Avoiding every trick of thought.

You try to understand it, but are confused
Because a church says it is this
And a philosopher says it is that
And your closest friend won't say much about it at all.

You see it captured sometimes in a work of art
Framed by soft colors and strong brushstrokes
Or expressed in the lilt of a song
Or projected from the footlights of a stage.

You know it has a center somewhere, a source, a point
>From which it spreads out like light
Radiant and warm
Casting outward beyond the stars.

You hear it called God, or a higher power, or a Buddha 
Which is like defining it as X
An unknown quantity
The indefinable " It."

And when I look at you, deep
It is there, the center and the light
The flow of promises never fulfilled, never quite reached
The seam of reality and delight, beyond grasp forever.

Platt