The Argument

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The sounds come tumbling,
Cresting the tip of the tongue
With the suddenness of a Spring flood.
Will the force of the argument,
By its sheer volume, dissolve my banks?
Or will reason sweep your detritus away?
You speak. I answer.
Is it you who blithers and blathers?
Or could it be I who dithers and dathers?
Perhaps both.

There is an eddy in the mind
Hidden from the swirl of verbal emoticons.
It says maybe I’m right. Or maybe not.
But the dam must hold against the torrent.
A thought rushes by,
Though, tossed by the current, it passes
Before I can net, then dry it in my mind.
I respond to what is already gone.
Feeling foolish as soon as the words are launched.
The flow has swept both thought and response far away.

Why do you imagine I don’t know?
Why do I think you don’t understand?
Even as the tidal wave subsides
I feel a malevolent current underneath the surface.
Lapping gently, but determinately,
Wearing away that which holds the argument secure.
I resist, shoring, buttressing, sandbagging.
It is no longer the argument, but the principle that reigns.
Do you feel the same?
Does the argument weaken even as the resolve grows stronger?

An ocean is full of things the same, yet different.
Each is right and none is wrong,
Divine absolutes cannot be changed.
But are yours divine? Are mine?
I hug that truth, fearful of allowing it to surface,
To face the light after the dark depths of mind.
You too, I suppose, must wonder
If the storm of opinion has stirred up muddy waters
Disguising truth, faking fact.
Do we hold tight to water in a sieve?

I let my river run again,
Though this time damming its flow.
It is not weakness that stems the tide,
But caution instead.
A strategic retreat, a reversal of the tidal bore
That signals, not defeat, but assessment.
I know, and I think you understand.
You understand, and believe I know—
Something.
And for the moment the waters are still.