A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations... [Harry Callahan]

With open eyes, engaged,
we travel through our younger days,
oblivion prevailing
in our narrow passageways.
Acuity is not the blind
as what we see is clear in mind.
Periphery recedes
and limits what we have to find.

Side streets and alleyways
become the vortex of a maze,
Epiphanies abounding
while we shuffle off the daze.
Our cognizance is not the core
of anything we struggle for,
our sentience expanding
as we come of age - unsure.

Then up to, through, our middle age
our certainty turns back the page.
internalization
bars us from objective gaze.
No time for what we do not know,
we hasten where we think we go.
scope degeneration
makes us puppets in the show.

In time, an empty feathered nest,
alerts to where we are bereft.
cumbersome omission
highlights everything that's left.
Thus only once we've run the race
comes consciousness of what we've faced,
illuminating ignorance
teaches Wisdom, Hope, and Faith.