Oh Lord
Universal father and mother
Burn away the illusions of existence
Three friends
Astride two wheels
Alive in a single moment
Oh Lord
Universal father and mother
Burn away the illusions of existence
Three friends
Astride two wheels
Alive in a single moment
There is a peace here
In this mingling of muslims
And infidels
Inspired I suppose
In equal parts
By awe and reverence
Faith and the appreciation
For beauty
And while nothing at all
About this place
In the heart of Old Delhi
Reminds me of home
The tenor of this moment
The tranquility of it
Is mindful of a Sunday stroll
Along English Bay
On a fine summer’s eve
With fellow revelers
In the ambrosia
Of existence
This parade of life
This hubbub of trade
Of needs
Of desires
This chaos of order
And community
And here am I
Amid the throng
In the moments between
Want and have
In the choices between
Necessity and pleasure
This is existential quandary
Alone in my thoughts
In a sea of solitary moments
Each a universe
Borne from a solitary mind
Known only to itself
These in parallel all
With the essentials
Of desire
And necessity
A flurry of universes
Sharing a single dimension
While in my universe
The bodies of a thousand strangers
Dance in cadence
With the flow of trade
A performance at once
Exquisitely mundane and beautiful
Some places just feel ancient
Time there stopped
And the land quit changing
I never feel more here and now
Than in such places
This little speck of life, I
In the midst
Of eternity
One tiny moment
Of meaninglessness
Writ large on existence
Such was her presence
She left eddies in the world
Long after she left
Golden glory of sunrise
Remind me
Existence is a miracle thrice
That there is something to observe at all
That there is something to observe it all
And that I am both those somethings
Tides and surf
Wash death’s remnants
Upon the shore
Autumn’s chill short days
Fell colourful leaves
To brown on forest floor
Nature makes no time
For funerals or grieving
In the cycle of life
Love and loss and mourning
Experiences of consciousness
Which is to say
When existence
Becomes conscious of itself
And learns to fear oblivion
The mesa falls away
Into the depths of early evening
Low sun illuminates
Undulating canyons and buttes
Sedimented sandstone
Layers indicating a scale
Powerfully daunting
And exquisite
And I
Stopped halfway between
Floor and ceiling
Sense myself in the centre of aeons
Epochs pass
Every hundred steps or so
Up the trail
A hundred years
A thousand
A hundred thousand
A million
Unwinding time
As species come
And species go
Great, fearsome lizards
Ruled the known universe
For 165 million years
But only in the last tens of steps
Before the top
Do I walk in the footsteps
Of my most ancient ancestors
A paltry 6 or so million years ago
I am reminded
For all our accomplishments and cleverness
We are but toddlers on this Earth
Itself nothing more
Than a pale blue dot
Circling a minor star
Spiraling in an outer arm
Of one galaxy
In a universe dotted
With hundreds of billions
Layer upon layer
Of time and space
Stretch out to scales
Unimaginable
A few steps more
I stand atop the mesa
Returned to the time and place
That belongs to me now
Deep, heavy breaths
To gain my equilibrium
While scanning across the vista
Tallying a few hundred million years of strata
A snippet
In an existence billions of years in the making
Layer upon layer of time and space
To make this collection of sediments
Which seems so very vast and ancient
But is no more than a cosmic blip
In all that was
All that is
And all that will be
I feel small
Fleeting
Insignificant
Yet
Somehow
And nonetheless
Stupendously magnificent
Because in all this immensity
Stands me
A self-aware collection of molecules
Contemplating the inconceivable miracle
That is my own consciousness
Tucked away in some small backwater
Of eternal infinity
Just how fucking exquisite is that?
And the view up here is awesome.
The sun sets
Light falls away to darkness
But for the little beacon of light
That is me
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
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