Growth

Beholder

I do not understand.
But I can feel.

This world builds
prisons
for each of us.

To be born
is one thing;
yet another
to grow into the cage
they give you.

Beauty,
Power,
Lineage,
/
Bars,
Locks,
Chains.

It is


exhausting,

lonely,

cruel;


and for you,
the same, but

manifold
  logarithmic
   multiplied
    perpetual
     incessant
      relentless

This is why I am so pleased
you have learned
to pick the locks
or slip between the bars
or simply disapparate,
escaping
when you want to.

Listen.


You are not

an image.


You are

an interior.


You are

a cathedral

with many rooms

and stained glass in sunlight

and libraries

and catacombs.


You are

a book

with 1,000 pages

and many chapters,

including the unwritten.


You are

a mountain,

fitted in a flowing garment of forests,

dotted with deep caverns,

drinking lightning in summer,

content under frost and snow in winter,

filled with granite and obsidian,

quartzite and gold.



You survive all fire.


You navigate by starlight.


You leave ripples in the world.


You are a microcosm.


You are a garden.


You are a home.


The waves break themselves on your shores.


This is why no cage will contain you.


You are.

Coherence

Gravity is the weakest force in the universe.

No empowered crack of the electric
arcing back and forth,

no aurora painted by the solar wind,

no polarity of the magnetic
to           push          apart
or pull-in-close-together.

No elemental binding
in all the flavors of matter.
No quarks or gluons or plasmas,

no 

e x  p   l    o     s      i       v        e 
r e  l   e    a     s      e
 
of the nuclear.

No | wave | particle | duality | particle | wave | No

quantum collapse to knock flat
your tiny human mind.

Gravity is the weakest force in the universe.

This is why you do not fall through the floor.

It permeates all that is.

It does not manifest.

Not like the others.

Even something as old
and as true
as love
unveils itself.

But you say “gravity”

you say the very word:


G


R


A


V


I


T


Y


and

I’m reminded
it’s only weakness
if you keep staring at the surface.

I see the moon locked in tidal orbit
with our pale blue dot;

I see the sun and the Earth at perihelion,
closer than they’ll be all year;

I see the white tail of a comet
flying through the abyss;

I see the long sunset horizon
of a black hole;

I see the colors of stellar birth
in the cradle of a nebula.

And beyond…

a binary system.

A neutron star,
a pulsar,
each sharing the other’s orbit,
ferociously magnetized,
broadcasting into the black,
emanating light you can hear,

radiating
the circling of their dance
as far as they can
out into the deep
and the long dark
of the ever-glinting void,

until gravity wins,

warping space,
bending time,

and they fuse together
in their ultraviolet,
in their sunrise,
in their infrared,
in their lightburst collapse of all that is.

This is called a kilo-nova.

This is how gold is made.

song of the multitude

she is multitude

she contains ecosystems
she is immense
filled from edge to edge with wilderness

she bathes in nightfall
and walks with death

she heals the forgotten and the outcast
moves in silence through shadow

sleeps in a mantle of tranquility

and like a leaf unfurling
bursts from joy in the light of dawn

she weaves her web on the strongest boughs

she watches from the high ground
of the mountain
and listens in the low places
of the valley

she can see the small things
and hear the small voices
of the earth

her hawk-sight soars far through the air

her song is water flowing over rock

she is guided by the stars

she is interlinked

her eye is uncovered

she is the dry country drinking the monsoon rain

her mind is the undersoil network electric
of the ancient forest
from mycorrhizae to heartwood
where the hare darts through the unrolling ferns

her heart is the cumulonimbus
towering anvil thunderstorm
lightning arcing into the dust and the dirt
where the coyote runs over the darkening desert

her soul is the deep of the estuary
where the ocean welcomes the river
after its long journey
where the salmon come home

once in every circuit
of our planet
around our sun

in this furthest arm of our galaxy
spattered among the deep space countless
where gravity bows before the unknown

she is multitude