I went looking

I gazed upward to the sky of an uncertain future
and scanned the horizon for a beacon of hope and sense of direction
I knelt and dug through the earth of even the deepest-buried past
and sifted through both pain and joy, panning for a single nugget of truth
I sat and dwelled effortlessly in a present of stillness and silence,
in the untouched space between the motions of the second hand

I looked to the west for some single, simple, unifying principle to bind it all together
I looked to the east for a Way to see the sum total of a lifetime only yet half-lived

I have not found my answer
I have not found my self

And now I see only the million scattered fragments
and hear only the dreaded ticking of the second hand marching forward
but perhaps because I was asking the wrong questions

perhaps because there are no right ones