My fellow poet Charles Martin sent me this photo of his as a photo/poetry challenge. (Make sure you click on his name, to check out some of his work!)
Having recently watched the movie Inception, I’ve been thinking extensively about time. Thus, the two things have melded into this.
People ask how time as we know it
Began
And why cruel death stole into our world
They ask if eternity
Is a line or a circle, meter or a wheel?
But it is neither and it is both
Eternity is liquid
Within an endless, bottomless void
There are no lapping shores of time
There is no rocky bottom
Its ripple-rings spread out
Forever
Eternity cannot
Should not
Be contained
Then
Long ago in eternity past
Whispers of doubt and deceit
Filled the once untainted mind of man
Pride was born
And stretched itself
Like a cat awakening
What if eternity was caught?
What if it was compressed
Into boundaries and space?
Ageless immortal hands
That had never known disease
Dug into the earth from whence they came
And scooped up humble clay
Moist and soft
He flung it on a wheel
Spinning, spinning wheel.
Man shaped his own creation
Dampening his labor
With the sweat of his own conceit
Building and throwing down
Immense and elaborate plans
Grandiose schemes made of mud
Finally
Simplicity struck his tired being
And in that blasphemous workshop
A rude pitcher resulted
The surface he hardened
With the heat of his burning anger
To think that God had lied
That eternity was now his to control
Derisively
He grasped the handle
Reaching into the void
He scooped up eternity
Into his vessel
And held it triumphantly aloft
But some things are not meant
To be made that small
And unbeknownst to him
The essence within had changed
He grasped not eternity
But lost it altogether
And was left with a base extracted matter
Time.
Mortality.
Death.
But generations lauded
This failed attempt of man
Raising a temple of sorts
On an arid desert plain
Guarding the pitcher
With great blocks of sandstone
Until time was lost within itself
To evaporate slowly
Forgotten
In this sepulcher of independence
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The Wisdom of Gavroche 