This light
This scene
This Earth
Only we humans
Can make of this
Hell
In nature’s kill
Know instinct is integrity
In consciousness
Is born the lie
Cruelty, and malfeasance
At dawn I climb the mountain
To remind my consciousness
Of beauty and awe and goodness
A ribbon of light
Winds along the valley floor
Swallowed by the mist
A narrow street
An ancient town
A boy and his kite
Off to play
An ancient game
I an old man
Feel the joy inside
Paper and sticks
Ribbon and string
Dance in the wind
I become again
A boy and his kite
Just for a moment
But the moment
Is good
Beauty in soft light
Nature’s array of sandstone
Photographer’s eye
Two eyes in the night
One winking
Over stone
Subtle miracles each
The way of physics
Matter
Quanta, atoms and molecules
Gravity
Gravitas
Billions of years
The stone
Another, subtler, miracle
The way of atmosphere
Geology
The elements
Erosion
A gentle whittling away
Over millennia
Millions of years
Of crystalline rock
And here stand I
A miracle of my own
No greater or lesser
For matter becoming
Life
And life becoming
Conscious
Billions of years
On this planet
I have become
A way for all miracles
To know themselves
“She is like an angel,” he says, awed
I nod my head
As her boat recedes, into the night
I check the display, hoping I caught it
It’s there, as I search for words
Transcendant
Is where I land
When neither beauty nor perfection suffice
And even the divine of angelic falls short
A word for when no word captures an experience
In times of trouble
Or anxiety
I reach for Earth
From which I came
And which sustains me
Where resides peace
There am I
An Island of consciousness
Standing on an Island beach
On a planetary Island in space
Circling a celestial Island in a galaxy
On the outer rim of a galactic Island in an expanding universe
That is an Island in a multi-dimensional array of infinite universes
Singular
Infinitesimal
Inconsequential
But in this moment
I am
I am enough
Necessary and sufficient
For consciousness has no bounds
While it has no explanation
It needs none
The buoy sings
In broken meter
While gull cries
As steel
Rings out its soul’s lament
Rolling on the seas becalmed
Which lap gently at the marker
Slings languid clapper
Side-to-side
Until it dings
Seeking gull’s reply
For bereaved augment
Not one to be remiss
The gull
Its song amiss
Takes wing with foulest aural screech
Through which the many souls buried
Here
By storm
Beseech
For they that never heard the bell
But discovered rocky shoal
With sundered timbers of their hull
Forsook their invitation to God’s holy hell
No, not that descent
Instead remain beneath the sea
Without repent
To pull the chain of their lament
This Melfort Bell
Forever
Out of meter
Comes the night
With celestial swagger
Its vanguard in scarlet, violet and indigo
Descends the void dotted by galaxies and stars, a planet or two
Beyond the dim beacons built by small creatures
To penetrate the darkness they fear
Pix to Words 