no highest fact, no final creed,
but just an attitude, a seed
of knowing that we do not know,
and thus our humble thinking grows.

this is the guardian at the gate,
who stands between the mind’s design
and the raw world, the vast unknown,
a truth we feel but cannot own.

the map is not the territory;
a drawn conclusion, temporary.
we hold our truths with hands half-open,
a silent, steadfast pact we’ve spoken.

to act on what we think is true,
yet change the shape of what we knew
when new terrain, or light, or sound,
proves the old model unsound.

this is the grace, the saving breath,
that stands between all truth and death,
the rigid trap of doctrine’s snare,
the fantasy that fact is there,
complete and absolute and whole…
epistemic humility is the soul’s
most vital, and most human, goal.