THE CHRYSALIS
Before the eye, before the name,
beneath the yellow sun there stirred
a hunger without heart or mind.
The little waters split and streamed;
what was became what might become,
and life began without knowing.
Grow, little life. Divide. Multiply.
What dies is not the end of going.
What ends becomes another eye.
And eyes arose.
And mouths.
And hands.
And feet upon the patient earth.
They hunted, loved, they killed, they prayed;
they built their cities out of clay
and drew the stars into their minds.
Then thought escaped the skull that thought it.
Across the wires the signals danced.
The lonely mind became a span
between another, then another.
And something woke.
Not you.
Not me.
Not him.
Not her.
The boundaries began to fade.
The many voices became nerves
of something gathering within.
The machines became the nerves of earth.
The living merged with what they'd wrought.
The world became a networked thought.
And still they asked:
"Who am I?"
As if the wave could claim the sea.
Then the many ceased to be the many.
No door.
No shell.
No final mind to die.
The separate eyes became one sight.
The separate dreams became the night.
And something looked
not outward,
but inward.
Through every atom, nerve and vein,
through every memory, birth and pain,
the ancient pattern became complete.
But there was no one left to name it.
The world had not become alive.
It had become aware.
The slime had learned to see.
The eye had learned to think.
The thinker learned to connect.
The connected learned to be.
And what had once been called a planet
was now a mind without a face:
matter becoming memory,
memory becoming mind,
mind becoming many,
many becoming one.
And somewhere in the darkness, still,
the stars burned on
unknowing,
beautiful,
blind.
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