Inner Visions
Upon a time not so long ago
I saw these things, and locked them away,
Treasures in memory's secret stores:
A sunrise of Apocalyptic brilliance,
Clouds of opal strewn
Above a sapphire sea.
White ruins of an ancient city,
Once home to a great people,
Now settled to silence, the only footprints in its dust my own.
JUst behind these things
I felt another something
Immense, unnamable
That lies beneath our normal perceiving
Like water below thin ice.
The awareness of this presence
Felt only in fragile moments
When images too beautiful for words or speech
Burn their way to the depth of our souls
Gave me a sound I sometimes hear in rare times
Of perfect stillness:
A clear bell that sounds a tone unmade by any instrument,
A sound that stills the frantic revolutions of my reasonings,
Brings me the pure light
Filling the mind of a child.
In fleeting impressions
Falling past the tempest of experience
Through the cycles that so often grey our lives,
I sense the other side of the world,
The part that lies forever in the In-Between,
The calm and steady eye in the center of the cyclonic round
Of creation and dissolution; the drive-train of the Universe,
The unmoving hub of the Infinite Wheel.
Sometimes I feel this other place, both faraway
Yet nearer than my latest exhalation,
Playing counterpoint to my heartbeat, firm beyond all confusion,
An isle of strength that sits solid without substance,
A haven in the surging sea of doubt.
I touch it with my mind, sometimes, in flashing moments
This is enough - enough to bring some peace
Between my warring emotions, enough to steady my hands
As I guide my life towards its uncertain end.
I suppose it is enough to have this gossamer understanding,
Some insight without the whole story.
It is enough to make me shoulder my burden,
To soldier on.
Copyright © William Masonis | Year Posted 2008
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