Robert Ludden | + Follow Poet |
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Strange Oracle

A boy who spoke as an aged man
sat on a stump in the woods
pondering.
"If I were youth alone" he said, 
"you would not listen, or
if I were age, you would defer 
a moment just to be polite, and then
swing wide your soul ship's helm,
your captaincy nirvana bound."

Few undertook the forest voyage;
fewer still saw mountain tops
behind the trees, nor wisdom
in the moment of eternity.
They merely rested there upon the stump,
for any consciousness of unity
will cast out time 
and bounds,
and destinations in exchange
for glimpses of the truth.

But they may seize exuberance
in youth, or open patience
in the aged visitor.
One may detect beyond the mists 
a new reality unborn, undying, 
always there within,
without a prayer, 
bedecked in joy--unseen, untouched,
unqualifiable, the light of light
eternally begotten, God from God
and most would think, 
were he to jump out, then,
it would be somewhat odd.

I hear him, on that isolated stump,
his mountaintop disguised...
he is right,  of course.
There is no age entitlement
for wisdom,  and
there is no journey,
no arrival, nor decay.
In truth, there is no "not"
at all, to set apart
the paradise of now.

But he's a quantum jumping orbits
quite without permission,
quite without,indeed, a cause.
And yet sometimes
if we should look the other way,
he does not leap at all.  It's time
to celebrate the little fellow,
for he opens up our minds,
our Bachs,  our Michalangeli,
before we ever even wonder why.
                      ~

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