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Visions of Eternity
Whispers waving grains of this mystery.
Dry rasping in golden canes of reeds it sings.
On heather it breathes such gentle breaths,
And sways green conifers at solstice
With powdered wisps of white.
In whispers that no years suffice measure,
Flow these currents beyond the oceans of days,
Articulate what words might not utter,
Speak of powers turning planets and forming stars.
Sings this theme
From all twinkling shards of infinity.
Sings this of power and intelligence.
Sings this of design laid down in laws,
Gives form purpose, and purpose to form,
Weaves the course of planets into one fabric,
Beginning at the end and rolling again into itself.
Sublimely this veil is draped,
Yet parting at a soft breath.
An omnipresent curtain is this,
And a web in the corner of a barn window.
Measure the strands of glistening silk
With your intuition and your senses.
Observe the momentary form of this wonder.
Weigh it with hourglass precision.
Science, set your instruments to the task.
See if it fails expectation, or exceeds it.
Put your best minds to the task.
Put nations to the task, and worlds to the task.
Dissect the manifestations of your curiosity,
If it pleases you, if it need be.
Tear the heart out straightaway.
Take it from the man, and hold it to your eye.
Hold it in your hand and in your mind,
And with your deepest consideration,
Tell why it fails to pump eternal life -
All this and then some to find only simplicity,
That it comes back to one drop of dew on a morning grass,
And life come anew in spring,
And new seasons to push the old aside, away,
The night to move aside day,
And on to an adjacent second and minute and hour,
And onward forever, to eternity,
Everlasting.
Everlasting are the days.
Everlasting flow the tides of time.
Everlasting flow the springs on the hillside,
To the streams,
To the rivers,
To the seas,
To the sky,
To the rains,
To the springs on the hillside.
Will an hour change the rising and falling of the tide?
Will a timepiece measure the day?
Can a standing oak alter the sky more
than the flutter of laced wings in a storm?
Nay speaks the speechless rustling of cottonwood.
Nay speaks the churning water beneath the mill wheel.
Nay speaks the drone of cicada at noon.
Heed or be not.
There is no spring in timeless realms!
No death in eternity’s fire!
See the street dog wag a heavy tail.
Weighed down is this fiend by blackened bowels.
Despise the sight if you must,
Deplore the foulness dragged along behind,
Or love it, and encourage the autumn leaves to linger.
But take the day as it comes, and lay down with peace in the evening.
Embrace the temporal end as a sweet, bosom, friend.
Sing the disease, heed the myriad legions feeding.
Divine are the organisms breeding in your blood.
Teeming are they and consuming.
Number them all and weigh them up.
Make a toll of the besieging elements.
Measure and record the deterioration of youth.
Drink deep depths of profundity until you are giddy.
Roll in the truth, you street dog,
Savor the elixir of reality.
Wag your heavy tail in fury.
Eviscerate your festering carcinoma with a single slash of a saber.
Cut to the bare bone with a blade keenly honed.
Tear these moth-eaten shrouds away from you.
Break asunder the bonds of ignorance with a single nod of your head.
Silence the specters of superstition with a smile and a sigh.
Take the threads of truth as they unravel.
Take the whole and hold it to your breast.
Is it not what you are, or not what you wish?
Wish for no more than the whole of reality.
Does a sparrow not have as much truth as a star or a tree?
Call a tree yours if you must.
Or make no claim at all.
It shall still be when you have become dust.
By the law that gave you sight, esteem it free.
Take a saw to your core, and expose the rings within.
Sharpen your senses on the gritty edge of reality.
Cut to the bone.
Cut to the soul.
Sing as sweetly as you can.
Sing all the tunes you know.
With all your ephemeral breath, sing sweetly.
Sweet is the life springing from death,
Sweeter still the day before death.
Spit on sorrow.
Damn the remorse with a tempest rage.
Curse the end, and curse the beginning if you must,
But live for the day,
And sing as sweetly as you can.
Listen not for the bells that ring on the morrow.
Make your music while you may.
Write joy as an epitaph, while life burns bright.
Night will not terminate the yearning of mind and soul.
This light will burn in the fires of infinity.
The color of the morning is painted on darkness.
(Suns will blacken and give way to other suns)
Constant is change,
Ever breaking the shackles of attachment.
Ever turn the cycles of change.
There is death only in the stagnant cesspool of constancy.
Life lies in creation.
Ever brings creation new change!
Ever blossoms spring through winter!
Where is wisdom if all has been said?
Where is learning if all things are known?
Glory ever to the moments passed!
Glory then to the moment!
Glory then to the moments not yet arrived!
Epic heroes rise to this occasion, to this moment!
Occasion this moment and write it for the morning to come.
Seize the sands before they slip away.
Glory to the man who carved an antelope on a rock in the desert!
Glory to the antelope, and glory to the rock!
Glory to the desert, succulent cradle!
Refreshing stage in the eternal scheme!
Glory be to the cacti! Glory to the sandy waste!
Glory in the darkest holes beneath!
Glory be to the scorpion, and to its sting!
Sting away life! Sting to death! Sting for life!
Sting clarity into the nature of all things!
Rise in the morning and see frost on the willows.
Witness the fog lifting from emerald waters of a northern lake.
See your reflection in the wing of a dragonfly.
Hear the words of your life
Sung on the scintillating tongue of lark and whippoorwill.
See them lift on a skyward monarch.
Touch this song, the snowflake wonder on your eye lashes.
See the widow black spin gossamer miracles in the eaves.
Sings the wind of this in the trees, in the leaves and branches.
Sings all creation.
Sing sweetly then.
Sing then of swamp and bayou, of all mountains and hills.
Sing of step and prairie, of plateau and frosted arctic.
A song for all is your breath.
Take the moon on a tail of fire.
Make higher still for Venus and Jupiter.
Aspire to them.
Tie them to you with your thoughts.
Feel them bound to you with molecular cords.
And still the earth will have you,
And the worms your flesh,
And the rocks your bones.
Take your place where it is.
Wear your skin without shame.
Eat your meat, and sing your day.
Hallowed be your breath and song.
Hallowed be the confounding day of your birth.
Hallowed be the stench of demise.
Hallowed be the lion springing on gazelle.
Hallowed be the waters flowing from the well of life.
Take life from it and return it again in the same measure.
Kiss the pale pallor of demise
With intimate lips,
With familiar lips.
But do not linger there while you wear life,
While you still sing sweetly.
The gleam is gone from the eye of a corpse,
The gall is rich, the youth spoiled, the meat sour,
An appalling meal for maggots, flower to a dung fly,
Why to a philosopher, an end and beginning, or only an end,
Or only a beginning,
But only transient.
Eternity waits eternally.
Enter this night with song on your lips.
Enter this splendid day with harmony on your lips.
Rest and be reborn.
On the morning of the deep night,
Awaken from this sleep as a soul.
Ever burns the spark of your consciousness.
Ever burns the spark of your spirit.
Ever shines the light of your mind.
Cast your burden down at the end of the road.
Harbor weakness no more than you must to gain strength.
Awaken the spirit from this marrow spent.
Mark the finish of this day with the sweetest song.
And in the fall of night, shed salt tears if you must,
If you cannot trust your instincts that the weary will find rest.
In a new morning hour
Throw off this disgrace,
These trappings of mortality,
And embrace a celestial dress.
When this burden is born sufficiently,
Time-tempered to imperfection,
Displace this millstone weight.
The fledgling has flown the nest,
And in years will be forgotten,
And in eternity be ever remembered.
But for this moment of eternity,
Walk upon the grass, the blood of your kin and kind,
Green in the veins, flowing effervescence of youth.
Sit upon it, spread out upon it, within it.
Voluptuous against your soul it feels, and one with it for a time,
Then passing on to another, growing other blades.
Would you have all at once?
Would you be forever young or forever old?
Would you be a flower forever in bold bloom,
Or the budding day of youth, tender and green,
Or sweet perfume scent as petals fall to soil again?
Are they not all the same?
Will you not
witness your defecation?
Will you not void your bowels in proud glory?
Will you resist your intake,
Make a meal of shame,
Spurn the fruit and meat,
Retch at aroma of bread,
Make no cake for the day of your years,
Watch the morning only, and dispatch the eve away?
Take this day for its all -
For upon this day infinity is founded.
And on this day lies the spark eternal.
And this day is all that life is for this day.
Life is this day.
Live this day.
Hail the sun that shines on the earth this day.
Hail the rains that wash its soul and wake its children.
Hail your birth and your death with equal wonder.
Would you
have it in a poem?
Could a book hold it or ten volumes more?
I should put it in a word for you,
If I might find letters to correspond -
This gift I would grant you,
For good or bad,
If only I were a god.
~ Daniel F Mitchell
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