Homage to Long Since
Anaximander
bold pre-Socratic sailor
set the earth afloat
without water or boat
unsupported by pillars
cables or girdles
or the broad backs of turtles
*
My end is my beginning
and my beginning my end
peek ahead, deja vu
the tenor holds true
sang Guillaume Machaut
*
In the economy of rocks
old Scotty Hutton found
no vestige of beginning
no prospect of an end
*
Darwin was afraid his wife
might read his book and take her life
thus he made his apology
only half-heartedly
publishing tardily
*
Unintended or not
Fred Nietzsche thought
the world is recurrence
so if life had a purpose
‘twould have come to the surface
long since
*
Four billion years and mounting
the evidence of counting
rare isotopes of lead
which by the by is killin’
our brain cells by the million
says Claire Cameron Patterson
kyrie eleison
Robert Dawson
A Saint Is
A saint is not so much a man
Who realizes that he possesses virtues and sanctity
As one who is overwhelmed by the sanctity of God.
God is holiness. And therefore things are holy
In proportion as they share what He is.
All creatures are holy insofar as they share in His being,
But men are called to be holy in a far superior way –
By somehow sharing His transcendence
And rising above the level of everything
That is not God. Thomas Merton1
1
From a passage in The Sign of Jonas (Hollis & Carter, 1953).
Not anything I've ever expected! To find a poem of mine smack-dab alongside a poem by Thomas Merton! I read "The Seven Story Mountain" in high school in 1958. I was entranced. Merton was an avowed 'anarchist' as well as a Trappist monk. I imagine that his anarchism appealed to me, at age 17, more than his mysticism.