To age and die
Natural, beautiful
Meant

But for her,
Lain waste to no clock
Only her smile has turned ashen,
Pale,
For what to smile about
When all whom she loved,
Is long since past?

She sits under the Bradford pears
Watching the snow of white, falling petals
Remembering a hundred years ago
When the old downtown was new
The streets were dirt and brick

She remembers a warm August day
When she watched them paint a Lady
on the side of a new, brick building
To advertise Tuxedo Tobacco
A good day then

She goes there still, to look at that Lady
Even the mural gets to fade
But not she

She faces
The Ravages Of Time~Less

split the atom an we get fission
mass becomes energy
but can we split a second
enter the essence of the present
what would it mean to us
to be that mindful

ask your self doesn't your mind
only occupy past future
abjectly incapable of living in the present
in the true present there could not be even a ghost of a thought
theres no time to think

can we enter
an incalculable split second
and totally take in that instant
with a forgotten organic technology

is it the big bang in perpetuity
yet quiet as a mute
a raging ever expanding sea in a connected
but distinct dimension

if you entered it
would it not utterly erases all of history
the thinkers and doers along with it
the step beyond the alpha and omega
the great underlining reality

imagine the penetrated moment
an all consuming unimaginable
trans-mutational merge
omnipotent
yet forever imperceptible
to those among us
time locked
an irreducible limitation
like an ant in a closed paper bag
a fixated reflexive machine
wandering aimlessly
with an unknowable mission
and a relentless survival mechanism
with no chance of survival

time as a cosmic metabolism
its medium space
a vast cauldron
an infinite vessel containing endless points of light

everywhere
myriad phenomena
its terrain and the temporal creatures that inhabit it
both exquisite and hideous
an incalculable zoo
histories victors and victims
one and all vanquished
by the curse
consciousness of dis-juncture
a merciless countenance of limitation

yet could time be an illusion
rooted in a narrow awareness
bereft of an eternal
inexhaustible self effulgent now
the rapture
an eternal ******

if we could only penetrate into it
would it swallow us
and blot out the drama of creations theater

is the
now
conscious
illimitable
ecstatic
a perfect meta moment ?

we hear from sacred texts
like the Vedas... Bhagavad Gita.... and Kabbalah
that we may enter beyond the veil
passed time and its ravages
passed mind and its distortions

not to the heaven of religion
in its endless
closed system precepts
anthropomorphic metaphors
theistic gobbledygook
and
sophomoric social engineering
a kind of cliffs notes
god for dummies

we can enter
the eternal abode of the divine
a point between
the splitting of seconds
revealed through the simple act of mindful breathing
pierced by the effort of a focused mind