When I'm attending
the late-night theater
of everyday
wonders,

I look up.

In the dark
the Earth has no heart
and even
Pre-Raphaelite roses
look menacing
and strawberries,
gorged with romance,
are smirking strangers,
but on the ceiling
of our home
there is an expanse

fizzing with ornaments,
rising with potential,
falling in wordless worship

and burning with
alien frost. There's
vast Time and
boiling Space

elsewhere

and right here,
almost graspable,
just a
thought-shift away.

So why is the past
forever filling
a decanter of regrets
and why is
the future crowded
with emptiness—

a screaming vacuum—

and what ever happened to
the majestic,
the motionless,
the omnipotent Now
that never left
but is farther
than the hidden elsewhere
behind a
temple of stars?

My heart,
a patient grenade
with terrifying power
to create

or destroy,

spills into a
softer universe
with this thought:

If the Hands
that hold these
simmering eons
hold us,

if we look
into a mirror when
we look into
a steaming galaxy
in the
slow-brewing ages,

if perpetual birth
is possible,
then perhaps
anything is,

yes, even
joy and spirit
being one
and the same,

even a few miracles
breaking into
my small mortal world

like a few
sizzling stars
in my hands.


Patricia Joan Jones