Friday, March 23, 2012

Just one snowflake swirling

Just one snowflake swirling during the height of the mighty storm
A single quark in an atom of a protein molecule on one cell in my brain

A single note in the chorus of the marsh as the sun grows warm again
Just one voice among the billions either dead, alive or as yet unborn

Just one moment, quite important, except light years away in any direction
The only tree in miles of forest where lightning chose to strike

Just one small planet of an average yellow star midway out in a common spiral galaxy
One billion years of geological change witnessed by absolutely nothing

Colorful patterns emitting subconscious messages from the wing of a butterfly
Just one boy notices for the briefest moment as she alights just one time

Just a ripple of the many on a single lake when the breeze comes up one day
One mossy, glacially-striated granite boulder in that vast northern woods

An eye falls upon a single pebble among hundreds of thousands strewn about
Just one neuron fires in the hiker and no conscious thought emerges

Just one photon emitted long ago speeds past a blue-green cloud-rippled paradise
A billion cries for food and shelter turn into white background noise

Water dripping from the glacier has not yet become the river we will experience
Just one small flame from the roaring bonfire rends a single word of my book

Just one dream may fuel a people’s imagination for entire generations
A single skeleton encased in stone gives rise to a moment’s pause

Just one instant in the implacable present, so quickly gone despite my many efforts
Narrow beam of reason disappears in a fog of ignorance and superstition

The pallid sun of December briefly lights the room and then the long night falls
Just one more acre cleared will help to feed us and cannot do much harm

Just one life condemned to ignorance, hunger and filth cannot sway our faith
Just one salty teardrop falls drying in that hot, red desert sand

A single prayer cast outward into the twinkling black of the celestial firmament
Just one more futile gesture in a city fueled by desperate need

Just one more forgotten moment in a string of days from many years, now all long gone by
A single-celled creature living large in one drop of greenish pond water

The very first fat raindrop lost in the dust raised by its approaching storm
Just one life form based on carbon given over to a moment’s passion

Just one light ray refracted through one water molecule in a rainbow
The last waking thought in a meditation that morphs slowly into restful sleep

A single simple stone among all the rest in a long and winding gravel road
Just one shortest riff of the sound of a creek roaring in the Spring

Just one more filthy refugee trudging amid the sighing, shuffling pilgrims
The anonymous steer in the slaughter house with brown eyes so very full of soul

Simple problem that unravels systems far beyond its own importance
Just one second before the explosion and things remain quite ordinary

Just one more drink should solve the problems plaguing me like biting flies
A single golden leaf spins ground-ward on a still and sunny autumn day

A child alone whimpering in a cold building with shining antiseptic floors
Just one more winter comber slams itself upon the ancient rocky shore

Just one more bitter pill to swallow in a lifetime of mental self-medication
One and only one inattention brings on death in a quick, but casual, fashion

Just one happy smile can lift the gloom that settled in like some densest fog
The faintest chance of one small victory vies evenly with the certainty of death

A single light after miles of driving may seem either lonely or inviting
Just one brief thought spreading out from but a single soul among the billions

Just one day in an era of an epoch on a short-lived, but fortunate, planet
Just one more Monday arrives too quickly as yet another weekend fades away

Just one song in the misty pre-dawn stillness begins the entire avian chorus
In a single flash of insight an old problem is finally solved, for once and for all

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