This poem is a response to Cynthia B.T's. polite polemic, Mind in a Cage.

https://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=91731

I am grateful to her for having incited me to use my mind.

Imprisoned or Prism

Our mind is the eye

By which we see, or not, all worlds;

The humdrum, the yet to come,

The mathematical, the fantastical.

By which we perceive, or not, all reality;

Be it materiality or be it spirituality,

Earth and air, blood and fire, want and contentment.

By which we believe, or not, what others have seen

Which our ears have heard of, or not.

 

How does an eye see?

It receives light re-flecting from a myriad forms.

Simple, as the bright moon hanging above dark treetops,

Complex, as the jumbled shelves in an old bookshop.

Our minds also re-flect, or not, the light they receive,

Which is then seen and perceived, or not,

Being weaved into the believer's tapestry.

For to receive, a lie or a truth, is to believe it

But by what light or wit do we divine what is which?

 

May a mind be caged, contained?

With what is believed, or not, each soul builds and weaves

Its own paradigm; lost paradise, prejudice, a present hell.

We ourselves, our own cocoons construct, and therein dwell.

Are some minds imprisoned while others fly free?

No, all are limited by how far and how much they see.

A prism receives light, it refracts and gives it back.

Unseen before, the rainbow, released, is displayed.

This colour was not caged but by light through prism is made.

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