EARTH ORBIT

Encapsulated in the ticking hum of this sealed sarcophagus,
Lonely as the nether darkness folding in on Time;
Ringed by the crystal deep,
Ordained to wake, to sleep,
And gaze .....
Away, drifting over the infinite edge of the world -
Seeing the curved air with the eyes of the wind;
Mesmerised by the bright intricacies of this exotic bead
Oscillating in the cosmic rays.

Lord of all surveyed - yet at its mercy
Dangling on a twineless thread,
This thin sliver of consciousness
Above a cirrus lattice meshed with gold,
Contrived to break a moonbeam's fall,
Splashed with rainbows spun from splintered light ......
To have and hold
In but an hour, embracing all,
For all.

This sapphire grain, lost pollen floating on the universal breeze,
Fresh from Nature's garden of ephemeral wealth.
Reflected not forever in this satin sphere
Are all the days that rise to light the measure of its path,
With golden-green of northern noon, and violet dusk of south;
The eloquence of Arctic's twilit solitude;
Interminable tempests tearing skies from scattered seas
Where more than seven shine like salty mirrors in the solemn sheen.
Whirlpools of weather, whiter than the sparkling shores;
Saffron Sahara's timeless sands;
Upper and lower Egypt - what are its pyramids beneath the clouds?
Immovable, slumbering Himalayas ....
How they tumble, brittle, broken, beneath these little hands!
Rich, religious, jewelled India - so poor,
Yet closer to the secret core of things.

Beneath the window how they dazzle,
Fragile, lucent, petal-strewn -
Then to the steel-dark night they turn, to fade and disappear.
And watching lone beyond them, hung on finite space,
Ice cold and sharp as mountains,
Formed of dust and centuries -
The Moon.

Forbidden wanderer, imprisoned in these metal walls;
Synthetic safety, guided by the silent sound
Which emanates unheard across the gulf of blazing black
From some remote and minute spot
Long civilized,
Where counted is the cost for all Mankind.

The vast, unanswered questions waver, glittering -
They spring like torrents from the questing mind,
And turn to vapour in the solar winds .......
There are nine billion names of God inscribed
Upon the nimbus of the Milky Way -
But no interpreter can yet be found.

Infamous nidus of despair!
In all of Time more tears have welled from weeping eyes
Than any ocean hurled against a crumbling continent.
Pristine planet,
Cradle, grave, and maybe pyre;
For life and air and snow and fire
Are not eternal in one cosmic breath
Or spiral swish of ancient galaxies.

How soon now must this window shatter on the sleeping world;
Then lost will be that vision
Spinning in the sequinned Heliopolis -
Dispelled to fragments of an opal memory.
This tiny refuge will so soon become as one with air and sky,
And melt like ether
To preserve the precious life that trembles at its heart.
It smoulders on the brink of pre-ordained trajectory,
Feels the grasping searing atmosphere,
Then plunges -
A shooting star: living, breathing, beholding -
Headlong into the blue inferno ........

Home!