A Relative Point

What is time?

Is it the moon’s hallucinogenic time

of the unicorn?

Or, is it the sun’s sobering time of radiant clarity

that shuns bleary eyes away

from yesterday’s optimisms?

Is it the relative notions of time and space?

Where minutes become hours and towers of hours

Transcending into days spanning more and more years

That then morph into scattered forgotten thoughts

Or misplaced shattered dreams

At life’s end,

As age takes its full measure and payment

Of a full life-

Lived with curious fantasy

Or mired on the stark streets of rue?

Either way, the only point of reference that matters

is the one that is written on the ignoble grave marker:

Stating a beginning date and the inevitable end date;

Where only a name remains to be remembered,

That is, if there is anyone left to light those candles of memory …

perhaps, with an appellation;

maybe, a final self-attribution:

saying, “I am not here any longer.  I am out there in the woods - - yonder”

Matters not, for the trees will whisper the way there

As the leaves explain how breezes can become winds

And how winds can turn into raging storms of destruction;

Leaving seeds strewn across the landscape

Scattered amongst the standings of the old forest

Where seeds can aspire to be more than ripen ovules

While the Mother Tree evokes a sense of community

And a place of comity among the old trees;

That no longer identify with the young diminutive seeds.

However, the songs of the progeny will play on to celebrate

that the grains will grow into the reasons for Mother’s gains

while wondering,

“Why vapid germination without savory temptation?”

When do the degrees of time gather enough space?

Thus, becoming a relative position in the universe;

Thereby also establishing the disposition

that the sun’s juxtaposition

Is where it sets - a past;

Or lies - a future;

And, at this moment, clarity and consciousness

Being the only truth that is – is NOW.

Standing neither as an egoic day

Nor a tortured night

But rather more –

A transcendent self.