William Masonis | + Follow Poet |
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What the Thunder Said

Again, the great slow rolling rumble
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,
Nothing they can do to 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.

     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,
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
      We shall drift together to the sea
      To be reborn into a million 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."

Copyright © William Masonis | Year Posted 2007

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