Primarium Opus
A Poem Written in the Aftermath
Of Having Witnessed a Strange Assembly
Of Winged Creatures, Painted on Clouds
And Drifting Ominously Across the sky
-
To behold the complexity of aureate sunset
Is to acknowledge the primary opus of the artist,
The one outside and within, that expects us
To comprehend all spiritual truths
Via the interplay of
Light, form, and color -
We sense that this is so because we vaguely recall
The hopes we shared on the day of our creation
-II-
Consider that eternity
Is forever before and after
Every interval of measurable time:
That we occupy a momentary space
Between the immeasurable before us
And the immeasurable after us
Is beyond our understanding
But we are not overwhelmed
With wonder about the enigma of time,
But with wonder about the mystery of us
We conclude that we are Everything
Because our reality is all that we know
We are the shadow maker
And the puppet impaled on a pole –
Mere players that have never seen the sun,
But claim to know of it and play to an audience
Comprised only of us
Yet, we would know more of the sun
And invent others who claim to have seen it
And emphatically say so –
Not just to us, but to others
We have invented to marvel as we do
And thus, our every experience of sunset
Is tinged by a sense of primordial sadness,
Even the least reverent of our viewings
We may live in the moment, but we are mindful
Of what it may be like when the gloaming is no more,
And we are left to the interpretation of what comes after
We are the proverbial “foreigners in a foreign land,”
And we are every moment homesick for a place
We may never have actually been.
III
I crossed a line drawn in my mind, then stumbled to my knees,
For in the sky, came passing by three clouds, and then, a breeze
And I began to tremble at the sight that I saw there:
A flight of golden angels that did hover in the air!
And in my fright, I turned away, and I began to cry
For in their shadow, I did sense that I was born to die.