the ascent...

We are shallow wells

which daily through

the deepest love is drawn

ever upward towards the light,

and by the product of that drawing

are we deepened ever slowly. 

In the gentle leaf and stick strewn

bower of my heart I feel it,

in my small and human way

I sense the humming of the source,

the thrilling of the light,

and the dancers in the dark.

The illusion of no movement

is a very human invention,

it is a gift of the moment

by which we slow-down

the passing of our lives.

When we invented clocks

to parse time into seconds,

like Dr. Frankenstein, we did invent

a monster whom we love to scorn

we named our creation tedium

a thing we love to hate, which

bolsters this stunning illusion

that we have time to spare.

As drivers of vague boredom

we excel at streamlining 

the excessive volume of our grief

over the fact of our mortality

into a thin and pliant band

that staunches the seamless flow

of time to a manageable average 

of 80 lovely beats per minute

ever throbbing at the wrist.

We are weeds in this garden

like the purple thistle in the glen

like a multitude of random grasses 

blooming rampant on the plain,

we are here to aerate the soil

of this mysterious dimension

with our never-ending questions

and plough the fields of wonder

with our endless and sturdy humor,

we are here to break ourselves

and to be formed again anew.

And so, I am always partial, and 

so you are always partial, and so what?

we are here, alone together, 

writing each his and her own version

of this frail, enduring dream of life.

And so, I bid you well my friends

and so, I will always smile to greet you

“hello, I am like you, broken and becoming,

do you want to meet for coffee?"

and this is how it goes, never forever,

but ever joyously, on and on and on...

lucy meskill