Who would find the profound?
	As though it found itself to be lost.
It need not by us be found.
	It's loss to us is but the loss-of-childhood's cost

In search we feebly fumble all around,
	yet it remains where it has always been:
engulfing us with wonders that abound,
	yet through our blindness seldom seen.

We heap upon it futile false words of praise.
	With weighty words, in vain we strain to pin it down.
But it's flattered not by intellectual displays.
	Instead, the awe in children's eyes shall be it's crown.

It has a life all of it's own.
	It need not words to validate it.
Yet, on and on us feeble poets drone.
	With useless reams we desecrate it.

Instead of shedding light on life's great mysteries,
	our intellectual profusion
seems to tempt life's truths to taunt and tease,
	leading eventually to our greater confusion.

Any understanding we surely feign
	as we pour out pretensions penned to impress
in a pathetic bid to explain
	perceptions too impossible to express.

In the temple of fame we try to earn a niche
	as we desperately hunt down the profound,
to then reduce it to a circus animal kept on leash.
	With a tether of terms beauty is bound.

Fly-tying poets with words as bait,
	we go fishing for deep profundity.
Our folly we realise too late
	as we drown in the depths of our verbal sea.

Like insidious spiders we weave our web
	with wonder as our unsuspecting prey.
Our greed is the fuel for wonder's ebb
	as it's entangled in the trap we lay.

Wonder, lured by wily words, is swept in our net
	to be forever imprisoned within our pages.
A once noble beast we shackle to keep as pet
	for, as noble as they are, words are merely cages.
Subdued by the crack of a poet's wit,
	in rage in cage this fettered creature paces.
While outside a game of poets sit
	and, to win the prize beast, play out their aces.

With poetic praise we try to capture
	the grace of the fragile butterfly,
not realising in our state of rapture
	that caged wild creatures' spirits die.

Then what prize indeed is this to win
	when its fragile wings are scarred.
In attempts to escape the taxonomist's pin,
	the butterfly's beauty is marred.

That, as we trap this source of inspiration,
	we realise not the tragic cost,
for those qualities that won our admiration,
	in this self-defeating process are lost.

Wonder is an endangered beast.
	Into its habitat us poets encroach.
Hunted down for the poet's feast
	ruthlessly impaled upon the broach.

So, from its prison in a web of words,
	let's elect to set mystery free
so it may soar as free as the birds,
	liberated from the shackles of poetry.