Most cultures know the art of riddles, or did, before the modern oblivion. They are hard to write, but worth the effort, as the author gets to vacate his or her own persona in bringing the riddle to life. The decent riddle cuts across the opposition of self and thing, prompting a deep insights into human existence.
WEIR RIDDLE
What am I that all of me disappears
Each day when the moon magnetic clears
The bay in a rush of surging waters?
Then I am but a momentary obstacle
To weighty phantoms, a scary spectacle
I cannot see or hear but only feel.
I know not who eats whom, or how they breed:
Whether they flow with the tide or act on need,
Only that I’d lose my catch if I impede
Their steady progress. Call me stick in the mud. Skim
My rim. Swim around or through my mesh, if so slim.
But all will fatten over summer’s interim.
O ye creatures of the depths, all who dream
Of fresher waters, fight your way upstream.
I’ll stay here and I am not what I seem.
O ye schools of chosen fishes, why prawn
The depths when clear mountain pools bid thee spawn
Sockeye’d progeny? Like a breath indrawn
And held for a summer, or a question posed,
I, too, am a circle not quite closed.
I mark the tide as I become exposed.
But still they do not see me. Nor do I lure or trick
Them. By law, a few enter, a random pick.
They thrash their scales against my rick
In desperation. But my door is always open.
Yet to get out they must go the way they came in,
And this confuses them. So they just turn a fin
And just mill about, which is opportune
When out like an egret in a choice lagoon
Steps the mantic girl child with a long harpoon.
SCYTHE RIDDLE
What am I that I should lean in an arc
Against the barn like a question mark?
I watch as Adam picks the fruit:
One hand open, in th’other a stone,
The same with which he did my blade hone.
He did forget that, and me - call him brute -
As both are closer to him than his wife,
But in his greed he forgets his ‘knife’
And so dies with the year. I just rust
Here as the planet goes from will to must.
It was I who cut off at the root – weeds
So that the trees might give them – seeds
To eat, physically, spiritually.
My blade is perception’s actuality.
It was I who cut the datura, the grape,
The thorn-bloodied blackberry as a favor
To them both, my fruits to savor.
Why then should I stand deserted?
Alas, that I should have ever flirted
With a species that by greed is so perverted
An ape would be more honest in my labor.
But one summer I did dance with a man
Drunk with the blossom’s fragrance, like Pan
Amidst the snakes, the birds, the bees.
He was a caretaker of a thousand trees.
In his pocket he carries a knife of stone
And he stroked me so and did me so hone
That I became like lightning
Cutting away the superfluous.
Why then should I stand deserted?
Anyone could hang me un-inverted
Inside against the wall, till summer
Come, like they did last year.
All those summers I can well remember
So why now should I be left out to rust?
Better that I be ground down to dust
Than watch the planet’s people succumb
To idle speech and forms of greed.
I watch my orchard in times of need.
Stand here like me while the harvest’s taken,
Bereft of love, but not forsaken.
Oasis Riddle
What am I that all beasts and men
Search me out in time of famine?
They see me even when I do not exist,
A mirage shimmering in the mist.
But note the present congregation:
All of the species in gestation.
Counted amongst the spectators
Are white ibis standing on alligators,
Deer strolling with cheetah,
And lions sleeping with zebra.
Here, the animals are no longer wary
Because here humans are not so scary.
Watch as the people trek in from afar,
Seeking respite from a relentless star.
They sit in the glade of a grove of palm
And there contribute to the on-going calm.
Seeing this fountain which never dries up,
Some take both hands and make a cup,
Then kneel and bend, dip and drink.
Perhaps they sense the deep karmic link
Which led them 'just in time' to this place.
They are confused as to time and space
But I argue that spacetime curves
As energy is threaded through nerves,
And they sense that. Body and mind collected,
They peer at the image now reflected,
And see their eyes, and behind their eyes,
They see Sight itself, the one who scries.
And such vision thought so undistorts
That fresh water becomes flowing quartz.
Yea, in my shaded precincts one might find
No further destinations for the mind.
Yet, at every moment, caravans leave and arrive.
In my clear pool, one can breathe in and dive
And spot my sourcing secret – a bubbling spring
That un-strings the nerves from conditioning.
So much for mental discriminations.
So much for personal infatuations.
What am I? A noman's land for refugees?
Come, reader, sit in the shade of my trees,
For in this quiet I give greater scope
Than e'er surveyed by the lord of hope.
By John Paul Maynard
PLANETARY RIDDLE #6
They say I am a dead world, barren
Of air and water and even rock. Yet
I am in truth more dynamic than
Any comet, asteroid or planet.
Craters scar my face and the score
Is a record of collisions so intense
They blew the rock right off my core.
Of all planets, I am the most dense.
Of all known worlds, I am the most erratic,
Because my orbit is a changing course.
Never straying far from the ecliptic.
So firm is the Sun’s gravitational force,
You might expect that that star would hold
Me fast. But I am free to spin and veer,
And alternate between hot and cold.
Who am I whose day is longer than its year?
Answer: Mercury
PLANETARY RIDDLE #4
What planet am I to be visible
To earthlings with naked eyes,
Yet remain unseen? Is it possible?
For long have I crossed earth’s skies.
Take first a simple visual clue:
I am a watery globe, featureless.
I, too, am known as the Planet Blue,
Exhibiting a kind of chemical finesse.
Gravity cannot explain my inner heat.
The water by H and He is insulated,
So I’m a lucid sphere, a world complete
In which something is being incubated.
Astrologers know me as the planet
Of sudden revelations and surprises.
I rule electricity and what you get
When the person is shorn of disguises.
Don’t forget my gem-like moons and rings.
Each is a world at once hot and cold, rock
And ice. They are upstart worlds, offerings.
Each is a chip off the old block.
Take Cordelia, Shepherdess of the Ring;
Epsilon, who guides and arrays the clutter;
Or small Miranda, whose talent is melting
Apart, then freezing back together.
Note Ariel, with its frozen flows of lava
And Umbriel, dark, with its eyeball crater;
And Oberon, splattered with ejecta;
And Titania, a captured spectator.
Evolve is the mission of every planet.
But note that I’m tilted and spin erratically,
Rolling like a ball along my orbit.
My magnetic field wobbles wildly.
By law, my orbit is the life of a human –
Eighty four years around the Zodiac.
Find me inside, as deep dawning intuition,
` And you’ll carry the Cosmos on your back.
Answer: Uranus
FLINT RIDDLE
Would that I be used by hands as skilled
As those which found me in the scarp.
Be it the fields tilled or the stags killed,
Both are options because I’m sharp.
Yet my edge is of your own making:
The relentless search for the stone,
Then the chipping and the flaking
With a fire-tempered antler bone.
All this care doth to me bequeath
An inaugural aura of high sacrifice,
So am sometimes found beneath
Church foundations, as a device.
Yea, I was not made by God or fate,
But forged in the veins of a volcano.
Hence my power as a Mithradate.
Opaque, I know nothing. Yet I glow.
Some try to outfit me as a socket,
Flaking a curved notch in my neck.
Others keep me in their pocket
Betting on the value of a fleck.
For, struck against myself, I’ll spark.
Catch the spark in an old dry leaf
And we’ll banish the cold and the dark
With no reference to belief.
-JPM
`Pain Riddle
I might confuse thee with my shelf-set life,
For do you not peruse and ride my breath?
Or should one liken you a nagging wife
Who nags Time itself till time of death?
In any case, you have no purpose and no pause
Except to call me to the source of hurt.
And I, perplexed as to the ultimate cause,
Have no choice but to be even more alert.
O flesh, arrayed in seven layers of tissue,
I will not drown in your chemical soup.
For out of this, somehow, thoughts issue,
And run with self, turning a moebus loop.
Alas, I will not this spear-tipped riddle solve
Till mind 'round person ceases to revolve.
Planetary Riddle #3
What planet aim I to be the twin
Of Earth in time of rotation?
Long have men watched me, alert,
Wary. Now you taste my dirt,
Hoping to solve this question:
Where is higher mind's origins?
Ah, the put-on airs of earthlings.
They think they can fly, have wings.
Like the planets, stay on a gyro track
As you transit through the Zodiac.
Inside meteorites are molecules,
Organic. They are universal tools.
Be not so earth-centered as to believe
That I, a planet, give no cause to grieve.
Examine the shape of my glyph,
And see my role in the human myth.
Your ancestors knew me as a brave
Man of action, who does not behave
By dint of rote, civilized norms.
I have no use for mental forms,
Being action and objectivity in quest
For truth, being and the sacred Alkahest.
Come and visit, if you must.
But be prepared for the dust.
I'll show you Mount Olympus
And the vale of Marinaris.
But first, direct your intelligence
To yourselves, to your violence.
Stop blaming me for your problems -
The results of selfish stratagems.
For the way is honest and direct.
The truth is consistent in all aspect.
To breathe, move, do, struggle and survive
Is the challenge of any animal alive.
Mammals with maps in their brains
Learned to transit all terrains.
Now they fling at me their probes
As usual, I play with their lobes,
Challenging cherished assumptions,
Exercising unused functions.
I am only one tenth Earth's weight,
But my aspects and progressions dictate
Self-struggle, tact and objective focus.
Your own ken and kin will come to us
And you'll take that awesome aim -
Freedom - in a vast cosmic game.
But now war breaks out as the Lie spreads -
Because you did not go against your heads.
VETCH RIDDLE
Who am I, and what, that you step me over,
Not noticing? Enough that you still walk
In fields and not mistake me for red clover.
I am deep blue, with different leaf and stalk.
My flower is composite and complex:
Paired florets in an arched raceme
Tipped with tendrils that coil and flex –
These are central to my scheme.
For with these tendrils I climb the stems
Of coarse grass blades and weeds in flower.
I turn against them their own lazy stratagems,
And convert sunlight into insect power.
You see the field as deadly competition.
But it is also proof of lively cooperation.
SPIDER RIDDLE
I walk on six and use two to see.
Near is my knowledge of niche and nook.
I go the way of the invisibility -
You don’t see me even if you look.
We live together nonetheless, and well,
Except when the woman comes in to clean.
Then our common home becomes a hell.
The killing broom of a mean machine
Has taught me to map the grooves
In the wood, and the darkest corner.
But this pall of fear does not behoove
Our odd relation – so warn her.
Tell her that a race of giants
Survives only by our ardent care.
So much for your vaunted self-reliance!
Lice would have made cities in your hair,
Insect would lay eggs in your food.
Parasites you would not detect might
Feast upon your tired blood,
Were I not to spin silken traps.
So tell the woman not to think of love
Until she stoops to study me.
And you, clumsy ignorance on the move,
I suggest silence, not intensity.
For there are times when things quake –
Whenever you opt to walk the floor .
But I prefer when stillness reigns.
Then I am free to choose to explore:
The dusty canyons, deserts and moraines
We call our common home.
Indeed, if you sat still long enough
I would appear and roam
Across your books and photographs
As if they were the rubble of a glacier.
I find your world an unknown vast frontier –
Buttes, mesas and high plateaus;
Pens, pencils like wind-blown trees,
And your white pages like fields of snow.
Amazed, you watch as I reconnoiter
Across the lines. Why does it please
You so that I should interpret
This giant’s den as so much rubble?
Being so awed, you just might see it:
That our worlds are one, not double.
Love, then, is a simple truce,
Invisible but no less revealing.
Tell her then, before you forget.
Meanwhile, I’ll hang from the ceiling
And watch you spin your silken net.
Poke Riddle
What plant am I to cause you pain?
That I grow high? Look out of place?
Being tropical, I've learned the laws
Of success in the bio-arms race.
Taste my leaf, just a little,
And you'll hear chemicals 'talk.'
Hit an insect with your spittle
And it will no longer fly or walk.
I learned my tricks in the Amazon.
The poison I took from the ants.
As I move north in exploration -
He who sustains, transplants.
I embody the laws of fives and tens:
Five sepals stand arrayed like petals
Around ten pistils and ten stamens.
From my roots I receive signals.
Note my big-hearted leaves, how they oppose
Themselves. Outstretched and drooping,
They look too tired to take a pose.
But enough of this amateur snooping.
If you care to know my secrets, live
And love the earth the way I try to do:
Shiny black-purple berries I give
To gaudy migrants passing through.
Blessed are those who die by the year,
Enduring underground as root and corm,
Only to re-emerge when winter's clear -
As if adaptation were the norm.
SALAMANDER
With your jet-black skin emblazoned
With perfect yellow spots, I mistook you
For a galaxy or constellation
Until I saw your four limbs and
The five digits at the end of each.
Then I knew that you were something
More magnificent than the stars.
Proto-morph, you sourced the code.
Lung-fish sprouting legs, you crawled
Up onto land, discovering all
Continents. What were you seeking?
Insects? Air? Vistas? Or were you
Escaping from all those many predators?
In any case, you grew eyelids, while
The brain, in support, ramified,
Lawfully splitting into left and right.
Adam pokes his head out of the pond
And spies the template, the legged fish
With its seven parts, plus its patent
To exploit all niches now open.
You are the protomorphic genius:
Many are the species following you
Embryonically up out of the sea,
Into the swamps and up onto the mud.
Ontogency recapitulates phylogeny.
Legged vertebrates follow you up out of
Amniotic seas, crawling up on the sand.
Now I find you on the forest floor
Lumbering slowly across a human path.
I crouch and look at you, eye to eye.
No reaction spoils your manner.
Even as I take you in my palm,
You remain indifferent, fearless.
-JPM
