When did the rains start
Far up in the mountains of nevermore?
There where blue moths fly
In the diminishing light,
In the mists beyond the dappled hills.
Where then was the beginning?
With no
Beginning,
How could the soft trills
Of chickadees
Arrive at last at the end?
If they had flown forever
From an infinity inclining
Deep and deeper into the past,
They would never have arrived at all –
Would they –
In the juniper trees
In the mists of early winter?
How did the ancient cart
Roll over the ruts of Malta
And down into the sea
By the lingering shore?
And so,
You see,
It’s as clear as it can be
That time itself is impossible,
An illusion,
That cannot be –
A smoke before the dawn, curling in the valleys.
Why look for a mist-bearded authority
To explain the inexplicable?
It seems we have misunderstood the nature of reality.
It is only a dream,
Not a thing.
Just an ancient scheme,
A vision,
Only a shining gleam
Flickering on the outstretched wing
Of the young raven,
Maybe a statement,
An intent,
A strange or misbegotten level,
A stilted
Statue placed high up on a pedestal,
Or just a phantom fading in the shifting shadows of the night.
Well, long ago,
Once upon a time, a drifting fellow,
An odd king of sorts,
Stumbled through pale courts,
His lies
Stemming from cowardice and a banality of weakness –
He walked with his hat askew atop his head – tilted.
Then in a blink, all of time–that illusion,
Like the seared leaves of autumn – wilted
And fell apart.
Now look beyond the shifting dust,
Beyond the rust
Of nevermore –
There gleams ahead – past the tumbled gates of time that used to be –
A mystery,
In the God-given arc of awareness,
At the owl-bright break
Of day,
The white-crowned sparrow
Dips his gold beak into the swift-running creek.
The tree trunks are black in the dripping rain of dawn.
The snow has come and gone,
All gone away
In the skies
Now can you hear the call, the cries
Of the loons
From the quiet, clear, listening lake,
Just below the meandering moon’s
Journey,
Just quite near
The startling canyons of the sunrise?
© Copyright, Sharon St Joan, 2023
