EVEN AS WE SPEAK
                            
    
    Somewhere the heavens touch the earth
    And the name of that place is the end.
    But the night sky starts at your feet
    And you walk in it wherever you wend:
            Stars your immaculate conception,
            Constellations your reflection.
    
    Even as we speak, lava gushes
    From fissures at the bottom of the sea.
    And, far away, up over the icebergs
    Clouds out of blue sky form purely.
            Like our ancestors, our placidness
            Wafts into the breeze like incense.
    
                    Take a look at your lifelong face,
            At the life-giving curve of the earth,
                    At the blue midst the blackness of space...
            Why not beyond the Milky Way
                    The everlasting stars of our rebirth?
    
    Down cold mountain the river crashes
    Over the crags into the forest green.
    But you won't taste the ground water
    Til it fountains from the loam of your dreams.
            Into the lake a stone drops, distilled:
            Your circles widen and you are tranquil.
    
                    Take a look at your lifelong face,
            At the life-giving curve of the earth,
                    At the blue midst the blackness of space...
            Why not beyond the Milky Way
                    The everlasting stars of our rebirth?
    
    How wondrous the rings of Saturn in
    The moonlit shell you hold in your hand.
    It took a million years for us to
    Understand the eclipse from where you stand.
            You ebb and flow in the sand at the shoreline:
            The waves of the moontrail reach to the sky.

Copyright © 1996 by Craig Eli Stone