Primarium Opus

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.