A poem is a kind of theater in which the poet is the lyrical speaker,
Explained A. R. Ammons. - A waterfall, a rock, a man, the universe, a poem
Intimating a connection between a mind and nature. An evocative act, action!
Shakespeare said that we are all actors strutting on a stage;
Heraclitus’ flux when standing in a stream contemplating is linked to time
And motion, unstoppable. The motion of a universal place ruminated
By a human knower, standing in a stream, seeking to align inner thoughts to
The impersonal motions of our galaxy flinging wide its arms of spirals;
Contemplating that which exists outside our being.
Yet, we too fling open wide arms and minds as we ride this planet
On its circuitous movement on that same ride in space and time
Throughout our ever-expanding universe, universes, deep into black space.
We are leaving trails of ‘trippy-tracers’ through time, dissipating as slow
As Radioactive decay. Particle physics, proton decay that is of
A hypothetical form of particle decay in which the proton decays
Into lighter subatomic particles, that is what we all are!
We are here in this present but rippling and ripping into a future
Just as surely as the great ice age glaciers dug and grooved
The earth on which we walk; we so slight, almost weightless beings
Mark it and take it into one’s self, one substance, one experience.
In that moment time stands still within that rock, on this rock,
In this man’s hand. Spinoza said a stone thrown through the air
Would think, if a stone could think, that it was the author of its own motion.
We, like that stone, forget that we did not set our own motion. Something
Greater set the trajectory, not an exact path, but the movement of us!
The galaxy, this universe, the many universes, spin and move, and flow
Without being infinite. And yet we are finite matter in motion.
Immeasurably, subject to no known limitations, duration unknowable,
These things being outside of us and yet within us all! We breathe the stars!
We embody the essence of all time, we recycle these precious particles!
Plunk, the rock is dropped “to dead rest”! Swept away with the energy.
Too much, too much motion, too much information, too much beyond a man
In danger of being taken away by the glacier, by the stream, by the spinning universe
sinking down with that stone. We carry within us the force which is going to undo us.
We become debris. Entropy, a thermodynamic dictates a lack of order and yet . . .
Oh,
Shelterless, with weary-bleary eyes we look up to view the heavens.
It angers me that the format is off when posting here the poem written and properly formatted. Then the allowed space here makes a hash of it. Please, copy and paste it into a document if you want to read it properly.