Useful Fiction: Continuation

         All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. 

                        Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Go slow, wander, read, write, listen

 and remember: time no longer 

   separates—the present surrounds,

 envelopes us, erases all

 hours’ distinction.  In time—the most 

  in time—just an outline of sand,  

 time and nature synonymous,

  creating this useful fiction—

  a truth without limit, present 

 bounded only by the words we  

   use to make the impossible.

I take you with me, live informed 

 by history ever-changing,

  lasting along, stretching between 

  us, thread and strands—broken lines of 

eight connecting our presence.  Then  

 and now I hear intrusions, these

  other presents, histories on

 the margin of our own, impinge,

  act out their will—lay open palms— 

 pass the body’s permeable 

   surface, bleeding into soil, a 

 harvest of lives and what we are. 

Out the open window—morning 

 glory flowers. . .  We drove as far, 

 as long we could—the sun went down 

  and the moon came up and out of

 Idaho—a big purple orb 

  rising across the night sky—a 

 morning star—kept us all the way.

Wyoming by night—Nebraska.  

Trains rumble in the distance with 

  low grumblings, lights cutting dark, the 

 dissonant horns blasting distance—

   a broad margin in the present

 stretching beyond the limits of 

  sublunar sight.  A document  

 of time, we make this fiction to

  live within, the present a gift

 for hereafter, these few days left

  to fill with words, and counting what

    remains finite—to disappear,

   grow old, wither and die, become

 an element of earth again.

Still, the current speeds us along. . . 

After a dark wintering night 

  dawning nature—our eyes transmit 

 spectacles of this universe,

   as night veils and the day reveals.  

Our history becomes its own 

  spectacle, part of nature, the dark

   made light, and in its glorious 

 creation now.  These our gifts—the 

 moments gathered here within and

  freely bestowed, these instants add 

 up to eternity.  Little 

  figures of time—dust and chaff yet

 add them, and then multiply, by two,

 or collate them, interspersing,

  even quoting them, a kind of

 remembering that adds layers

  and generates its own living 

 environment, an atmosphere

 capable of sustaining life, 

  enveloping us within a

  sublime landscape, with seasons hot,

 wet, warm and cold.  Heaven is just

  under our feet, when we dare look.

This our living document, this

  useful fiction, mends rifts—fissures 

 of stress and force—contains time, a 

  present gift, and comforts hardship. 

We make it as it makes us, too,

 even on the hardest of days.

Even daily, miracles may

 form faith—simple gestures, seeing 

   made new, revelations,

 living with a broad margin at 

  the cusp of some speculative 

   endeavor and understanding 

 you will never fully know why,

   yet still beat on.  Each word shall be

   continuous, without border, 

  beginning or end, all part of

 the living whole, an unbroken 

  stream of time made just and right for 

 you, all those who may come after.

I speak only to you, and those 

 willing to listen—attentive—

   to trains roll through the night, watch birds 

  dash and soar, cringe as lightening 

 cracks, gaze as she dresses early

  in morning light.  You give life its 

 potential—to breathe, stretch in the

  sun, lay in the tall grass, nothing

   less than a free soul set loose from 

  its bounds to change the world and all

 within and out.  We might tend a

  smaller margin, read less, drive more

 but we desire living art, a 

  useful fiction that ebbs and flows 

  like moods, seasons moving along 

 in time, with time, as time, living

  promise of what is yet to come.