AN OCEAN WITH NO EDGE

There is a story -
Everyone has told it to themselves and heard it told by another deep in their mind.
The characters are common, though the landscape seems strange, but it is what we all see when we spin in slow circles -
A wrinkled world we cannot even imagine contained.
Indeed, it is within our imagination that it unfolds further, unspools steadily,
Unwinds readily and does not stop regenerating but continues revolving round the center of ourselves.
The story is that of a wanderer, a quest-maker, a dream-seeker, climbing hilltop after hilltop,
Discovering the equal awe and frustration earned facing an ever-renewing horizon.
In this fable, are there many players as it often seems,
Or but one person, encountering reflection upon reflection of herself?
Is there a sole protagonist,
Or an infinitely fractured single soul, creating one Self, one Whole?
In a photograph of old friends smiling I recognize myself - in a squint, in a grin, on his face, on hers.
A man on a mountain, he is familiar to me:
I remember him, though he is an actor in an advertisement for a calling plan;
I remember him, as though he is my own brother, and more!
As if he lives my history and acts upon the impetus of my thoughts.
And it is everywhere I look, this mirror, this shiny stone against which the light bounces and bounces,
Through which even my anger and indignity are refracted tenfold.
I recognize myself in every act of war: I do not like it,
But in moments when red is the only color in my rainbow I do understand it.
There is a chamber in my brain where a mathematicial appreciation of order and efficiency lives:
In this chamber shaped like a temple I feel an awe quite like reverence
Watching twin towers crumple where they stand - the extraordinary power of an exercised will.
In this ephemeral second I am incapable of judgement; I see no right and think no wrong:
I am only a column of quiet, humbled respect for the formula of Think plus Speak plus Do equals Results.
But are we content to have the heat-warped line of our horizon remain forever fission?
Or is it possible, indeed probable, to apply the equation to fusion
And build a ladder to God?
Or better yet - can we take gravity out of it altogether,
Think of the spirit sideways,
And reach out our hand to wholeness,
Surrendering our attachment to the science of subtraction?
We are hiking hills;
We see swirls in the sky where the wind is made real and where light peels from the face of the stars.
We pull apart rocks with our hands without blinking as long as we think of them as metaphors;
We endeavor ever forward, pulled into the ebb and flow of vertigo,
Thinking maybe despite it all we can outrun the sun, stun everyone, and fly off the face of the world.

   [ POSTED BY Penelope @ 8:53 PM ] [ ]