What am I?

What am I?A gritted specklodged in the slitted eyeof a streaked infinity?Ignorant of its blindness,but pricked by its pain.My mind’s shining tapetumyellow with insight’s storeof collected fading light,revealing each predatorcaught by the slightest,fear-practiced glance. Or am I a dusty attic,found empty by allexcept one dark corner,damp from a broken tile?Piled with the shrink-packeddetritus of yesterdays.The stored slime-mould ofcollective experiencewhere the deep-past has diedof deprivation and starvation,but cannot shake the dripof rainfall’s memorybathing each hard,forgotten mistakewith the slippery lifeof newborn guilt.  Or am I the slow achethat never leavesmy crowded headas it lies too long stillon a cold, foot-worn stair?The stair that marks the limitwhere feet and handscrawled on bloodied knees.The stair I curl upon,comforted, foetus-safe,knowledge cocoonedbut wondering stillif the stairwayhas any purposebut its climbing? Is it time to go on?Do I dare stand and askso many questions?What truth am I?What must I becometo be the answerof all knowing,the lasting peace ofabsolute certainty? Is it in that feelingthat the world is shrunkto just two,and in the urgent,consuming needof those twobecoming one?
Does it lie therein the nestled warmthof a soft pillowed neck,pulse throbbing gently,pale skin damp and slick,its pores suffusedwith the aftermathof frantic loving? Or in the tearing wonderripping through the cordthat could once containeach beat of your heartwith the shocked sound  of a first born’s purple cry,as he takes his first breath,and sucks his first teat,bringing that warm demandof lifelong loveand willing dependence? Or in the cool breezeraising the downon naked, bloodless skin,hackled and prickedwith fear’s anticipationas the ice wolf preparesto launch its final strikeand rip out the vitalsof a body’s warmth?
 Or in the discoverythat makes senseof the impenetrable;that turns the universeinto just anothersmall, well trodden

tenement yard,hung with washingand echoing thesimple innocenceof children’s voices?
Or in some compelling truththat threatens understandingwill replace the hollow,ignorant soundof slavish nonsensethat gives no comfortto questioning minds?  Perhaps all……and yet none of these.There is no answerbut the livingand the wakingfrom thirsty sleep.Eyes and feetturning each corneras if the answerwill lie etchedon the smooth pavement,or in the rain fallingfrom a cloudless sky,or in the knowingthere is nothingat the rainbow’s endbut the simple potthat is our being.