Time

I've been reading Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. Beginning with time as a circle, repeating over and over through infinity on to time as river flowing over sticks and stones to the ocean, God, infinity. Then there is linear, one dimensional, flat time, parallel and 2D time, or 3D perpendicular time offering possibility and choice. Time without choice, pendular, a metronome of predetermined monotony. Or time amorphous, moving in fits and starts, reactive only to basic need fulfillment. I read on, sparked to note in my journal all the manifestations of time, one paragraph ahead of the author, every time.

I have my own theory of time as a double helix, which I'll write about later, but I was compelled to blog after reading this section, "It [time] is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy."

Do not fear it

Do not mark
nor mar that evanescent moment
Suspended
between all the hours of living,
the hours of purpose.


That moment
had nothing to do with anything ~
not your life nor mine.
Do not carry that kiss with you,
Nor calm
the fervent phantom touch.


Rather,
let the lambent flush linger
like rainforest air ~
Wet, sultry wet.
Let it be,
in the ancient, waiting air.


Let it be that single moment
when you breathe a coral-pink rose
or hear the lonely locomotive cry
on the other side of the river.
Let it be that moment
when the northern lights catch
your breath and toss it to the night.
Let it be the chicory Cabernet
that sharpens your tongue ~
or the cool glass contrast.


That moment between,
the one that whispered down our spines,
Was no more than the brief pleasure
of silk skirts dancing round your thighs.
______________________

I have a friend who seems brilliantly able to live in the moment. She is an artist, and like most artists ~ like me, I believe, is comfortable enough in the chaos that is the irrational universe. She does not appear to need to console herself with creating order or contemplating rational, scientific reasons, explanations for why. Strikingly satisfied with what is... is, she teaches me.

I am an artist, delighting in the unknown, the chaos, the thin mountain air space of time, but I am also a scientist, curious, and a theologian, anguished by, "Why? How? What does it all MEAN?" My friend reaches into the immediacy and tosses moments at me, which I then take and muddle and muse over until I have found its place in the grand jigsaw of my life, or its place in a poem. If I offer my order back to her too orderly, she says I have made too much of the thing. If I give the thing its gossamer due, then neither of us have to fear losing ourselves to the other and there is ease.
_____________________
It is the quiet moments that matter:
the cat stalking my pen as I write this page,
the rattle then hum of my old refrigerator,
signifying home,
laundry folded,
freshly cut grass,
one single candle lit for a simple prayer,
God, keep her safe, please.

I cannot

in that moment, last night at the party,
that moment between our fingers,
yours and mine, as we pass the stemmed glass,
wine and water shared,
as we pass the glass back and forth,
crystal rim moistened
by both our lips, our lips
(only we know have touched),
but last night, under the stars,
in front of friends,
when our fingertips touch,
the details of living explode like snapdragons
between us.
_____________________
These two poems were written five years apart, mused by different lovers, but both reflecting an anachronistic love, one, that would not, could not fit into the 3D order of either of our lives. Held in time, attached to place and space and person, these poems became secrets and the love forbidden. But today, I wish to release them, like a meteor shower above all the tides of our August 22, 2009, Portland, Oregon living. Time is not their gatekeeper, their ruler. They are of kairos, not chronos. No one can touch them now, tarnish them, claim them; they are available for all as all Inspiration should be. These poems are now released to time as breathlessness and a heartbeat, sincere, true, no past/future attachments, lost and found in a crescendo of infinite One.