And there are those who think

            That life

            Is razor-sharp;

            A formed edge

                        Upon which

            All do struggle taking care to fall

                        To neither left nor right-

            The cutting edge reminder

                        Of the narrow lanes of life.

 

And there are those who think

            That life

            Is some harsh line of text

                        From some forbidding book.

            Laces to keep in tow;

            Turning blades to keep in furrow;

            A word that points each timid footfall

                        To its proper place.

            A pre-ordained thing that

                        Mind and will

                        Can butt against

            But cannot change.

 

But life is not of this.

 

Life is explosions and deep silences alike-

            The earth's exploding in the

                        Churning,

                        Burning

                        Bowels of its unharnessed energy,

            Erupting from its mountaintops and ocean depths

            In bold volcanic blasts and tidal waves

                        Of liquid fury.

 

Life is movement

            As the stars explode

            In the universes of their wandering-

            Streaking through the blackness;

            Falling stars

            And showering meteors

                        And the strange hypnotic lights of northern poles.

 

And, life is also this-

            The plunging cataracts,

            Cascading floods

            From Spring's torrential freshets,

            But, too,

                        A raindrop clinging to a window pane.

                        A snow flower

                        Blooming on an alpine crag,

                        A violet

                        Standing on a forest floor,

                        An apple blossom

                        Bursting into fruit in Springtime's warming sun.

                        Lovers in embrace of solitude,

                                    And

                                    Solitariness of lover

                                    Yearning for the one who is not there.

 

As all-encompassing as the bowl of heaven,

As endless as the horizon that keeps

            Its distance despite the hast'ning to its place.

As intimate as the whisper of a lover

            That penetrates by every pore

            And not by ear alone.

 

Life sensates with hope,

            Ambition,

            And of wish.

But there are vagaries, too-

            For life discovers itself in pausing

            'Midst the fury of its being,

And in that pause

            Relates all self in measured pulse-beat

            To the rising and the falling thrusts without.