Two Sights, and the Lessons They Taught Me
Upon a time, not so long ago
I saw these things, and locked them away
In the treasure room of my memory:
One sunset, Apocalyptic in its brilliance;
Clouds of opal shimmering,
Flying across a sapphire sea.
The white ruins of an ancient city.
Once home to a great and proud people,
Streets long settled into the silence
Of years marked off by dust,
My footprints in that dust.
And just beneath these things I felt another something
Immense, Unnamable
That lies far below our common perceptions
Like water flowing beneath thick ice.
The knowledge of its prescence,
Felt only in those fragile moments
When images too beautiful for the frailty of words
Burn their way into the depths of our souls,
Has given me that sound I hear now in silence
A clear bell that sounds a tone
Not made by any instrument of Man,
Which stills the frantic revolutions of my reasonings
And gives me back the pure sight I had long ago
Before my childhood disappeared.
In fleeting impressions
Falling through the tempest of experience
That carries us all through life,
I sense this other side of the world,
The calm, steady eye
That holds fast in the center of the cyclonic round
Of Creation and Destruction
That drives the Universe along:
The unmoving Hub
At the center of the infinite wheel.
Sometimes I feel this faraway place
Lying nearer than my latest breath,
Standing firm somewhere beyond all confusion,
And island of strength beyond all substance
Surrounded by the seas of our doubts.
I touch it with my mind, in flashing moments
And it is enough
To bring some peace to the wars of my emotions,
To steady my hands as I guide my life
Towards its unseeable end,
Uncertain and dim in the approaching distance.
Copyright © William Masonis | Year Posted 2011
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