It is a time of fever pitch,
A time when the very stitch-work appears unraveling
And signs of the Catastrophic are etched
Upon the face of the deep,
I would build an Ark within my heart
Big enough to house the dream of life,
Strong enough to chart the seas of consciousness
Until our moment can be won,
It would NOT be inspired by fear
Nor the wrath of God,
But by sorrow and by longing of a race
Whose dual instincts shout
Both love and murder
Despite all gospels of restraint,
A race that finds itself knee-deep in furious undertows…
Poised to slip back from Miracle
To the restless chant of Chaos,
I would build an Ark with limitless mind
Crafted from our humanity,
Our most elevated moments:
Of clarity
Of courage
Of compassion
That reveal the vast, agonized beauty embedded
Within our thwarted destiny.
It would be fashioned
From artifacts of kindness:
A soldier’s prayer for peace
That still clings to a rusty nail,
A lullaby that drifts through open windows,
A choice of laughter against all odds,
A tear that dries quickly on the back of a hand,
A knee that bends before the grave of an enemy,
A greeting to a stranger through the mesh of barbed wire fence
It would be forged from the cadences of heart and hand:
A shimmering note from Mozart,
A word from Shakespeare
A brushstroke of Van Gogh…
A million artists’ cries of astonished beauty
That rise stubbornly above the refrain of war and poverty
And the incandescent visions
Seeded in our souls
By Martin Luther King and Gandhi
And the dense, considered silence of monks
Who gaze out upon the world
From snow-shrouded caves
All the indelible footprints
Left in History’s anonymous sands
Of those who gave their lives in service to others
That neither wind nor time can erase
As I dream this Ark,
The synergy of thought will find momentum
In kindred souls
Who have been battered by perception
And summoned to the sea as well
And as we work together
We will find ourselves connected
And as we create,
We will find the light within our nature
And someday, out along the borders
Where Thought collaborates with Matter,
We will watch the fever break
And the rising waters recede
And witness our Human Ark become resolute
And of this Earth
Anchored in the streaming dream of Creation
That moves through each of us
Like a wind about the stars.
Trakker