Moon at Half Past Noon

The food upon my plate, it has a simple name.
I bought it with the coin I earned, I’m not to blame.
I do not know the hand that picked this fruit I claim.
But does not knowing break the chain from which it came?

My joy, I say, is mine alone, a seed I sowed.
My sadness, though, a heavy and unwelcome load,
Was placed by someone else upon this weary road.
When did my garden become a mere abode?

A silence dwells within, a room no one can find.
With words that shape the surface, but leave the core behind.
A lighthouse on a cliff, for ships that are blind.
Is the deepest ocean in me also in your mind?

I pass a face, a stranger with a downcast eye,
A story there I do not care to decipher.
I hurry past, my own concerns much higher.
What mirror walks with me that I should deny?

A headline screams of conflicts far across the sea,
A world of “them,” a distant, painful mess.
I sigh and say, “This truth I cannot possess.”
Does my turned head not grant it silent permission?

This brick I hold feels separate, solid, and defined,
Not part of any wall, or purpose in my mind.
I set it down, to other things I am inclined.
What temple rises, brick by un-claimed brick, designed?

Then offer not your answer, but the space to be.
A quiet, gentle harbor where a soul can flee.
To hear the sentence finished that begins with “I feel…”
Could a bridge be built from this humility?

The wind that chills my skin once warmed a foreign land.
The rain that feeds my soil was wept by another’s hand.
There is no line in nature that we understand.
Are we not all the same, unsettled, shifting sand?

So if my breath is not my own, but just a loan,
And every stone I throw disturbs a world unknown,
What is this self I guard and call my own?
And what is owed to a world that is you, grown?