What the Thunder Said

Again, the great slow rolling rumble As the gray shield of the sky shakes above. It comes as does some giant, or prowling beast of such kind Black, swollen with rain Gliding with easy step above the city That lies so inconsequential beneath its tread, Booming its way towards its private destination Utterly unmindful of the tiny beings far below. With the most careless of shrugs, It may snuff out their little electric fires With the humming force of its own, And nothing they can do can prevent it. For this is the way of storms, Dying in majesty as they pass over the land; Sinking into the earth with their rain, There to be pulled back to the sky by the sun To be born anew, and resume their endless march to the sea. It calls to the sea in its own ancient tongue, In rolling booms, a voice of some huge mad surf Calling down its name to Forever From far shores no man may know. And so we of the world below go our little ways, Flinching now and then as the great song goes rolling on above, Failing to realize how the oldest parts of ourselves The parts built up from countless lives of plant or animal, cell by cell That these parts understand the thunder's tongue No longer harkened to by our distracted minds. I heard the thunder's song once and understood it Once, when I lay abed not thinking, As just another animal in its lair, feeling it pass. Speaking through my bones, it sang: "We are not so separate. As you are now, so once was I; As I am now, so shall you be. My rains are in your blood Your blood shall join my rains And we shall drift together to the sea To be reborn into a milliion shifting forms Which all shall die and drift and take other shapes again, Times beyond counting." We are kindred, and beneath that we are One; That One looks upon Itself, But Its busy Mind misses the reflection on purpose, Caught up in delight at the dance of the forms it dresses in. We are all kindred, caught up in the mystery Of being parts of That which has no parts. This being so, it seems well to remember besides, That which my blood heard in the sighs of falling rain: "It is Sacred He is Sacred They are Sacred We are Sacred You are Sacred I am Sacred All are Sacred All is Sacred."