What’s left behind
On this near side of eternity
Shell of existence
Shadow legacy
Husk of memories kept alive
By those who’d known the shell
But never the true nature
Of what it protected
Too the trails
Footfalls left in the sand
Evidence of passing presence
Echoes oft anonymous
No matter all this
Tides soon enough erase
While echoes fade
To silence
So cling to hope
For something beyond
The far side of death
Or suffer the fear of oblivion
I watch you
Taking in the wide oxbow landscape
A thousand feet deep
While I photograph the small details
Of tumbled stone and distant valleys
If you could embrace
The vastness of space
Then even a galaxy
Would be a minor detail
In the landscape of infinity
And I?
Not even a speck
To speak my insignificance
Demands more consideration
Than my infinitesimal displacement
Of time and space deserves
And yet
Here are we
The infinitesimal
Contemplating the infinite
Which I suppose
Is big enough
For me
Perhaps
Even…
Divine
Like the way a river
Has carved this earth
For millions of years
And left a canyon here
To pique our wonder
Despite the ways
My eyes can see
My ears can hear
My fingers feel
My tongue can taste
My nose knows scents
The world I sense
Is incomplete
And even with our cleverness
The tools we build
Extend each sense
Take me beyond
Known boundaries
The world I roam
Is but a part
To this I add
Imaginings
My wildest dreams
Absurd theories
Draw with words and pix
Artistic renderings
And yet
What mind and heart creates
Is in some sense
Quite finite
(I’ll reach my end
In time and space)
While the possible
Is infinite
Perhaps some day
I’ll spend my last
And come to know
What comes beyond
Then grasp at last
What it all means
Become myself
The infinite
This flow of life
This stream of possibility
This realm of plausible hope
Where I have seen
The interplay of darkness and light
And from it learned truly
That neither is possible
Without the other
Each renders texture upon the other
While the transitions between
Reveal the greatest insights
I marvel
For a moment
At the saris
Hanging in the shops
A spectacle of
Colour
Texture
Pattern
Each sari unique
Tightly packed
In the confines
Of tiny shops
Not at all unlike
The thrumming humanity
In the narrow streets
Of Chandni Chowk
These leaves may seem
Like a reminder of past glory
These leaves may seem
Like a reminder of future possibility
But the leaves
Are just leaves
All the rest is just stories
I tell myself to make sense
Not of leaves
But of my own existence
Words arranged in verse
Form a matrix of possibility
An author’s intentions
A reader’s interpretations
Layers deep
Miles wide
All this also present
In a single word such as
Aum
Love
God
Beauty
Perfection
Each a poem with all the
Subtle renderings and possibilities of
AngelouÂ
Frost
Dickinson
Shakespeare
Plath
The final meaning rests solely
And rightfully with the reader
Every culture
Every person
Knows beauty
In their own way
I remind myself
Try to find
Beauty’s heart
In every way
That is the place
Where we are all one
That is the place
From which flows love
Recall the vibrance
Once displayed in many hues
Now no more than trace remains
Though brightness scattered
Here and there
Decay sets in
Drains true nature
Of its lifely due
Thus am I left
With naught but mem’ries
Fading fast
Remiss this guard
Of summer past
Which lingers still
In so few leaves
Fallen to the forest floor
There soon enough
Back to earth
Will they be drawn
And all that was
Will then be gone
Pix to Words 