Simple Sad Serious Things (Part 6)

And so I'll linger on top of this hill
and take in the valley,
the space within the tree branches,
the moss, the wind.
How suitable,
that acoustic guitar theme
repeating the same two chords
in arpeggios like licks of flame
giving way to an equally sparse piano theme
of my own composition,
one of the secret themes.
Suitable for this landscape,
the mood of the trees and moss
and ambiguous swirls in the clouds.
It's a theme with four unadorned chords,
nothing fancy,
except that the bass chords start
in tension with the repetitive theme three octaves above
and don't find their natural home,
E minor, for sixteen bars.
And I'll think of endings,
doors closing,
the crack of light in the windowless room attenuating.
I'll think of
other people's words,
of the price we pay for hearing the world.
I'll think of the end of the walk
and how humans can't bear much eternity.
And I'll wonder how close I came
to new age boilerplate.
And then I'll walk off
down into a valley,
wind at my back.

Consider: "To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient truths; both dispense with the necessity of reflection."