Milkweed

Oct 6 2019

The act of colour
to misdirect.

Deception,
as in the octopus's cleverness

shifting pigment to match.

Or the stealthy tiger, stalking through the grass

in her dark-on-tawny camouflage
of scintillating stripes. 

But it's the butterfly, with her winged iridescence

that truly beguiles,

shimmering in ultraviolet

transforming with the angle of light,

proclaiming her poison

in soft erratic flight.

Or the crafty Viceroy

who pretends to Monarch's throne.

Little is as it seems

when the world is blind

and the one-eyed man is king.

In a world where sight can't be trusted,

and those who see in black and white

will deliver us

or tyrannize.

We live in a world where fact that is demonstrably true is disputed; where we are all entitled to opinions but can't agree on the basic truth; where deep video fakes are about to turn whatever certainty remains into quicksand; where science seems incapable of breaking strongly held beliefs, from climate change to evolution to the nature of gender; and where the big lie and unethical repetition relentlessly batter away at our defences.

Where the leader of the free world happily resides in his own bubble of deluded reality, and his opportunistic enablers continue to serve their own venal interests – of wealth and power – over the greater good.

Yes, there is a (rare) political undertone to this poem! It didn't start out that way, but I suppose my trajectory of thought was pretty much predetermined once the word “deception” found its way onto the page.