Showing posts with label Relativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Relativity. Show all posts

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Lifting Off From This Life

and as I saw myself where I lay quite still, just barely breathing
I began to leave in peaceful radiations

rising up, I separate, and leave a trail of gently streaming images
passing straight through the picture window as though it is not there

rising freely, tucking backward, a back dive arching upward
arms spread quite wide and I’m trailing, a rainbow colored mist

moving onward, climbing upward at a steeper angle, the foothills fall away
and from a spot between my eyes, an infinite image is unwound

much higher now, but not too far off, the mountainous divide comes into view
so very free and beyond being calm, evaporating in the contrail of my soul

heading West and ever higher my density decreases
in somersaults and laid out back flips, an entire journey in an instant

and then, high enough at once, I see the curve of our miraculous atmosphere
at last so free with arms outspread, it is escape velocity for me

moving cross the moon's lovely face a bright blue planet shines far below
then on around to the dark side to slingshot away with even greater speed

and faster now, cruising openly with the photons from the sun
leave the friendly ecliptic behind to get a feeling for the void

and in four short years my soul can visit nearby Proxima Centauri
but at this speed time passes so very slowly that I am aged but very little

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

Relative To One Another

I am slowing down as you are speeding up and we pass at an angle to time
They go up and we move down with the vast oceanic swells between us

Rotating slowly I see the beauty of the stars and galaxies all around us
Spinning too fast in my time I became disoriented and confused

I am folding up my ragged tent as you stake your newest claim
Her mother can no longer stand but your child has just learned to crawl

I am passing you as he is passing me and we cannot yet get out of their way
There is a new well in your village and we celebrate by our swimming pool

I read my book as you send one-fingered messages off somewhere into the ether
The snow that sent you off the road was welcomed by the farmers

We carved different ellipses around an invisible center of gravity
They waste more than they can ever use as we eke by on castoff remnants

I traveled quite slowly but was struck head-on by a speeding semi
When at last I returned it seemed nothing had changed but no one recognized me, either

The loss of the microscopic diatoms spelled disaster for the whales
Parts of seconds were to seconds as seconds were to the age of the universe

Her long lifetime could not be seen on the smallest of geologic time scales
All their simpering adulation could not push his boat across to heaven

We pass closely heading in different directions in all four known dimensions
Their silly propaganda changes timbre, Doppler shifting with the passing election

We observe a planet perturbing its sun as we are swarmed by microscopic mites
We attack our enemies while trillions of our cells hungrily struggle for their blood supply

Gentle winter sunlight shows the soft side of nuclear fusion on a truly massive scale
We destroy expensive, sophisticated satellites with simple high-speed brute force collisions

I am spinning slowly around in circles but you - You are really making a mark
A sun-glassed business woman phoning in a leased car distractedly strikes a fawn

I am sliding down the hill smiling, never to ascend again
He still climbs upward, his fatigue masked by the anticipation of the run

We both stand quite still as my train leaves you behind at the station
I briefly continue moving in small arcs after stepping off the merry-go-round

This seemingly small increase in temperature rippled through the biosphere
The insects hatched early, the chicks starved and the trees were decimated

My bobber went down just as you roared by shouting hoarsely from your speedboat
I sat down to be served as she struggled with the wood for their cooking fire

Our music and fireworks filled the air but not a sound went into space
I paused behind my muddy ox as your silvery jet gleamed far, far overhead

The difference in our ages would make a full lifetime for someone else
Our fossil bones would mix and date to plus or minus a thousand generations

The look in the eyes of the mutely destitute mother spoke too much to me
He thought disdainfully of all the little words he could ever hope to write

The poverty, filth, sickness, slave labor and lack of hope were as nothing -
Given the wondrous future paradise he learned of in the magnificence of the mosque

The clockwork universe was underpinned by the chaos of quantum uncertainty
Our most basic assumptions proved devastating to our ecological niche

I lay on my back with arms outspread in a field bright with spring flowers
20000 miles above, a geo-synchronous satellite moved right along with me

I breathed deeply as my beautiful vehicle turned oxygen into gases, poisonous to me
You survived by cutting firewood as your goats denuded the drying hillsides

He had his two sons and their daughter-in-laws, so he did not work any more
He strove hard to attain a corporate jet and to earn a 7 figure bonus every year

She remembered as a child that it snowed very heavily and it was always cold
Now, her obese youngsters went about smirkingly in baggy shorts and tees all year round

Each small change was imperceptible but the first and last photos were truly of different men
The runners showed amazing speed, but you casually drove by them so much faster

Dinosaurs dominated the earth for 160 million years but left here 65 million years ago
Our written history began about 5000 years ago with simple bookkeeping records

The sunlight that sustains me takes 8 minutes from its surface to my forehead
Four and a half years later, at 186k mps, it reaches the very nearest star

He looked at me with those soft brown eyes and I just had to stroke his ear
A long line of crowded stinking semis brought more cattle to the slaughterhouse

I am slowing down as you are speeding up, but for a while we have communications
I stand still on this rotating earth, orbiting the sun which revolves about the Milky Way as it moves towards constellation Hydra at a mere 600 kilometers per second