Seeing Is Believing (Poetry)

We each are our own version of the truth —
we only have our eyes to see the world
and if we see the same there is no proof
what’s plain to some is not, to others, pearled.

The sky is blue, we’re told — so we believe
whatever shade we see, that shade is ‘blue’
and yet we cannot know what we perceive
to other eyes appears a different hue.

And yet as witnesses we stand and swear
and say we saw it all with our own eyes —
convinced, because we know that we were there
and never dream our senses might tell lies.

Sometimes we see the things we want to see
at other times we’re blinkered — even blind —
our prejudices tint reality
with colours — tilt the balance of our mind.

What we have learned — experienced — is all
the evidence we have of how things are —
and wisdom’s written on the subway wall
by prophets who each followed their own star.

Truth is fact — immutable as gold —
a natural law our world is built upon —
yet absolutes are difficult to hold —
like sand they trickle slowly — and are gone.