Two Interior Truths

The thoughts that cross the chambers of the mind
do not belong to you as blood to vein.
They drift like weather none can quite confine,
their shapes assembling out of mist and rain.
You follow where their obscure currents tend
and call their passing murmurs friend.

Yet deeper still another presence lies,
a tenant lodged beneath the moving air.
It rides the stir of inward tides and tries
to guide their restless surge with patient care.
It leans upon the helm of what you think
and steers the voyage toward the brink.

This is the first cold lesson of the heart,
that something in us governs from below.
It feeds upon the mind’s uncertain art
and turns its fragile compass where it may go.
A silent pilot hidden in the breast
directs the drift you once called best.

But there remains a knowledge darker still,
one whispered late when weary senses close.
For even that dim rider lacks the will
to prize the dwelling that it daily knows.
It dreams instead of some more fitting clay
and longs to cast this poorer host away.