Poem written in 2008 to friend and sometime totem-muse Golden Gates, after she had expressed upset over a comment a lover had made to her.
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you are more than the sum of parts
too easily captured in light and word,
cut and pasted and wasted
when they do not tell the story
or even the cover of the book.
there is purpose to the person,
and every vision provisioned of hope
tells us more than the curve of skin
and the colour of your hair.
fair though you may be, you are more.
for every soul wears the shell of life,
every life wears the shell of experience,
and every experience is more than fate,
more than random chance and happenstance.
it is the forge of the soul, the furnace.
and how can eyes capture the truth of steel
forged in the fires of desires and the liars
who think that you are nothing more
than the sum of some parts, easily captured
but never held, for they have touched nothing.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.