Star-Crossed

When we are children, we reach for things as children do, with grasping and seizing. A child's world is very physical, and can be had through exertion. There are no facades, and the surface is an expression of what lies underneath. When we grow up, we find that things are not as they seem, and the world is full of pretenses and charades. Nothing can be had by simple taking. We adults must first dig down and expose the truth, and then decide if that truth is worth possessing. All too often, it is not. But Christ told us to be like little children, and this is what he meant. Let our yeses mean yes and our noes mean no. Let the exterior life be no different from the interior life. Let the reality we see be the reality that is. Then, we will once again be like little children, and our simplicity will be our happiness.


Star-Crossed

I built a bridge to span the stars,
but found it fell too short
to reach the ruddy cliffs of Mars,
far less, a stellar port,

for in the sea-expanse of space
there was no tending-down,
no breccia to set a base
beneath my iron crown,

and all was left to drift away
upon the solar wind,
the residue of child's play
no longer underpinned.

Then from the earth I brooded on
that disappearing frame,
a sun, a moon, a star, and gone,
an arbitrary game.

Perhaps a bridge cannot assuage
my longing to depart,
but someday I will quit this stage
and make a mounting start

to gain the heavens overhead
where feet have never gone,
to rest upon a pilgrim bed,
my pearl and my dawn.