An Odyssey Untouched

In the beginning was the truth transcending
Alpha and Omega--too dazzling to catch
the human eye.--too patient in its vigil
through the trillion years of night. And
there were gods aborning, fanciful creations
of the creatures from the sea,
who learned to breathe and watch
the warfare in the sky and finally to write
about the wonder of it.
.
Then there was El, Baal, and Elohim,
Astarte, Gaia, Artemis
and hundreds more
upon their heavenly thrones
who played among the dust and lust
of Earth, and made the Nephilim
to rise from bones, and blood, and art.

So humankind cherished their gods
and goddesses, but at a decent length...
it would not do to genuflect too much,
to bare too much of angst
before the peerage bar, to tremble
as one more is turned away
short of the mercy seat-though justice
cries somewhere, and that lament
is strained.

And there were some who looked beyond Olympus
to the trees, the starry trails,
the ether of another time,
the silent void that speaks of worlds unseen--
and some are watching still.
(Some look back at them as quanta flash
across the ether, forth and back again!)

There are no heroes in this self-effacing song.
No dragons slain, no perfidy one may lament--
A boy in wornout coveralls may see the glory
his allowance could not buy...but then, alas, forget.

He sees his counterparts and wonders.
Do they wonder too?
Do they look back before their birth,
ahead beyond the tomb?
Do his feet retrace the prints of wonderers
who walked the timeline, knew they did not walk
as prisoners alone,
both breathing and creating history?

The boy sweeps up those sixty-seven years,
departs the stage
and violates his youth with wisdom
no one wanted, a breath of history
that no one understood, and few regret.

Souls have their day upon each earth home.
Some reach out when interfering eyes have closed,
creating mystic openings they never knew were there.
Others feed on prayer...alone.

Then It is All Souls Day
and time is but an artifice
that lets the work be done;
it is the enemy of little boys in coveralls--
of high school graduates like you.
Remember?
You seized the little summer there
before the car was loaded for the trip
to academia...the precious time
for meadow basking underneath the clouds,
the time to entertain regret
for words you did not speak
to that shy pretty girl who smiled at you
the day her life crossed yours.

You were the one who wondered.
You were the one to store up lifetimes.
You were the one to cast out gods,
creating new ones, fallible
but somehow more enlightened,
more accessible when awe, not fear
is the transcendant path.

It is a day for souls to gather.
It is a day for songs, and weeping,
looking back and forth along the timeline,
unashamed to introspect.
It is a day to know salvation never was
an instrument of God, but of ourselves.
It is the heaven only we create.
~