The hardest thing these days
Is to maintain a single view
Of anything. For starters, then:
My voices change. The on
Who went to sleep last night
Is not the same as he
Who greets the dawn today. It’s like
I keep a boarding-school
For passers-through of different
Mentalities; some can all but sing
In harmony, while others barely croak
Or speak above a whisper. And lo!
The world responds in kind.
Consensual reality becomes a joke,
And I can only tag along
In good faith. There was a time
When that would put the fear of God
In me — the booby-hatch next step —
But not no more.
There are other paints on my palette
Than those I claimed just yesterday:
Pastels, as well as primaries,
And the picture shifts accordingly.
Nowadays, I rather like the change.
The need for one right answer
No longer reigns — I glory in plurality,
The way I never did when I was 3.
But the message is the same:
If earth can shift and change,
Then why not me?

— Gerald Blake Storrow