It has no shape, no voice that we can hear,
Yet raised the oceans, pressed the mountains high.
It holds no grief, no joy, no hope, no fear,
Yet sends the planets circling through the sky.
It has no name, no words to mark its will,
Yet trees grow tall, and rivers run their course.
It breathes in root and storm and meadow still
A quiet law, a motion without force.
Before the peaks were raised, the skies were spun,
It was — complete, untouched by change or need.
Still as the dusk, and older than the sun,
It moves through stone and sky and wind and seed.
I do not know its name, though I have tried
I call it Great, where all things still abide.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
The Great - A Shakespearean Sonnet