The Infinite Moment

Evening falls and our shadows lengthen,

then fade and merge with the overriding shade.

Our hearts, too, stretch then seem to fade

and merge with the overriding longing

which seems to bring with it such errant temptation.

But if we hold true to our hearts and sing our sorrows,

as crickets sing, at close of day,

the world becomes our shelter, and our tears

purify our longing and give us clarity.

And time is a long line we cannot measure

except by silence and pure acceptance—

a moment without pain or pleasure

or thought of any kind. Here, in the infinite,

one discovers the roots of time.

You open your eyes and see, whether in darkness

or in light, everything in its place became itself

not by fate or accident, but by delight of some

unknowable force. A truth harbored

in every thing that is, deeper than any

fractal penetrated, within, unknowable,

yet known, entrusted to the senses,

understood only as far as the mind can

hold the greater truth. I look upon the world—

ancient, manifold—and my mind cannot hold.

The world exists as a higher truth than I can know.

And so, the mind exiles itself from the world,

just as the world is in constant exile from our minds.

The truth divides itself between the world and our mind

such that when we learn about the world, we lose a piece

of our mind, and the world loses a piece of itself.

This exchange, which we call adaptation, or change,

does not preclude the infinite. It is the infinite’s way

of remaining infinite. Should the exchange suddenly halt,

the universe would suddenly become finite, and matter itself

would cease to cohere. Time, then, is a series of exchanges.

Space is the marketplace. Uniformly, space and time are

the silence beneath the bargaining. One wants more,

always more, for one is like God—a creator. A creator

in need of materials. As poet, I wait in the silence for words.

I bargain with the noise for music. When the music comes to an end,

and all that is left is silence, why should I not weep,

knowing that weeping is all that’s left when words have been exhausted?

Change occurs when something is relinquished, and something new obtained.

I have given away these words, but what have I gained?

Silence, prescient silence, and a moment of infinite understanding.

A place in time that will always exist, even long after it has passed.