The Other Side

I used to think I was alone
the only one who couldn't find "home":
that place the Masters say will be
the  inner sanctum where we're free.

Turns out there's millions of us here
who turn within to get more clear
and yet to know ourselves is not
the end and point of this life's plot

If we but keep our gaze within
we lose the chance to see our sin
the way our blindness like a sea
covers truths in them, not me.

The ship of fools is built within
when we refuse to listen in
to foreign lives, those not like ours
the gift is in our imaginitive powers

The times we quiet cacophony
to hear "the other", not just "we",
to stretch beyond experience
of our own lives, and jump the fence

To get that while we'll never know
exactly what has helped them grow
or made them closed or scared or tight
what gives them closed and fisted fights

Presuming "we" are "it" -- enough
is like a man upon a bluff
who sees the ocean far below
believes it's he who makes it flow