.
Fertile land,
green trees,
and peaceful days.
Clear mornings,
unfiltered
through urban haze.
An affliction,
to seek any kind of calm
amongst the catastrophes.
A delusion,
to want anything more
than just existence.
When did the mind awake
to hear traffic noise,
and see stringent schedules
fall apart,
no longer building a nation?
Technology,
once lauded as the arbiter
of our progress,
merely returned our hands
to the dirt,
and our thoughts
on God.
The missile men
still seek the stars.
The warmongers
still call for war.
Could it be
that we are free
of their shared delusions?
Could it be
that clean air,
clean water,
and clean conscience
are attainable once again
through noble sacrifice?
What is
is what has always been.
The desire of the heart,
so endlessly corruptible,
but restoration
is but a few miles away
outside of city limits.
Precious few
are our days,
and fewer still
are those we share them with.
The green hills here
open to golden fields
that reach from the horizon in the East,
to the mountains in the west.
Soon, the sky will lose its luster
in favor of the steel-grey
of autumn.
Then, winter,
and the struggle begins anew.
Unceded,
Nature draws us into her bosom.
The skyscraper spiders
that spin concrete webs all summer,
will sleep for a season.
Gifts
that we so readily dismissed in June
become the currency
of January.
As the snow piles up,
and the wind cuts like a blade,
warm light seeps from frosted windows,
and wood smoke hangs in the valley,
not like the wildfires of summer,
but warm,
welcoming as friendship.
Every breath feels alive here.
Life feels free.
Smiles come easy
as the sweat of the brow.
The day’s chores,
writ like holy catechisms.
Every dawn,
a call to worship,
and every evening meal,
a sacrament.
We don’t notice things
until they are gone.
We take for granted,
that all our sins will be forgiven,
until the systems
that sustain our illusions fail.
And fail they will.
Entropy
is as much a part of the universe
as Creation.
Perhaps that is why
our lives are so short.
How sad would it be,
to live forever,
only to watch everything
become more distant,
dimmer,
colder
with no hope of Spring to come?
Renewal.
Green trees and fields.
The return of forest noise,
and the rush of the rivers.
The steel monoliths
and pavement plateaus
never see replenishment.
The painted lines
that delineate directions fade,
as does order.
Nature restores
what man seeks to subjugate.
An endless spiral
of vanity,
and submission,
and destruction.
The Earth
continues in its orbit,
ever traversing,
around,
and out,
and through.
We blink,
and we are gone,
yet every moment
is as important
as the last,
and the next.
Out here in the wild,
we watch the stars,
and the moon,
and feel all at once,
both alien and native
to this place.
What fate is “progress?”
What future is our destiny?
Can anything truly live
out there?
We are alive here.
Here,
we have always lived.
.
.
DJR – 2023
