The sound of awakening
is a glass breeze
and gold strings—
not one note in a
symphony, but a
symphony in one note—

the same note that cast
an auditorium of stars,
the same note
unwrapping the first
blue iris,
little package of
benevolence,
not a lover
or the loved one,
but Love itself, as
I suspect we all are.

You've brought me here
to this immense
and miniscule Now
where dark and light
are interchangeable,
where there's no
groping intellect,
only inspired emptiness,
where we romped and
reveled before
the descent into
fear and
forgetting.

Spirit where the body once was.

Yes, that pure
and only Now,
untainted by the past or
the future:
always here,
always absolute,
always unfettered and
filled with all Time.

Ruler of
the unmanifest
carousing in the vapor
of possibilities—
Yes, that infant,
ancient Now.

Crows like hooded oracles
know the way. They do
business with the ruthless
beauty of the woods
plodding out
of their trial by ice
to this one-note
anthem of creation,

and all I know is
we are the iris,
the stars and
the universe,
just beginning.


Patricia Joan Jones