A Dream For 2018 – Jan 1

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

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