The Sea of Faces 

Carved by time’s hands: faces.

Calloused, clumsy hands lithifying,

Or bladed, cruel hands striking,

Or soft, graceful hands nesting.

We can only move forward,

Having been set by time’s myriad hands,

A face is a story

Told in silent film:

Eyes welling light,

Or pleading to be seen,

Or ablaze,

Or burnt-out.

A face is an undiscovered island

Of urgent, vital, ephemeral relationships,

Of uncontrollable, implacable, accumulative conditions,

Of generative, ruthless, irreversible cycles;

Blooming, dying, resurrecting

On its own.

All the faces seem to disappear

Like the stars at dawn...

We are not what we see

Upon the surface of still water.

Invisible, we reach out from dark depths. 

We are so much more 

Than what can be said or seen,

Than what we read

In our faces.