Seeing Infinity
Focus not on the forest
or the trees,
look for the small animals
beneath the leaf litter:
snakes, toads, turtles.
Look closer,
find snails, beetles,
fungus, worms,
and microscopic
amoeba, paramecium, bacteria -
transforming rot into resources,
creating vital nutrients.
The lowliest comprise the base
of all life where they digest and recycle.
Process everything at this lowly level;
find the atoms and split them,
transform matter into energy-
mushrooming above the canopy,
through clouds, beyond our atmosphere.
to planets with their rings, moons, storms
to stars: giants, dwarfs, dying, birthing,
headlines from hundreds of years past-
to the edge of our Milky Way,
to Andromeda and
billions of other galaxies
created by our searching,
beyond imagination.
See infinity in the smallest and the largest.
Recognize the parts in the whole
and the magnificence of universal light,
feel insignificant
except for the wonder of having a place
and a purpose to love all of it.
Susan Beall Summers is a positive and lively Austin poet. She has been published in Ilya’s Honey, Texas Poetry Calendar, Harbinger Asylum, Small Canyons & Anthology, Di-Verse-City, Yellow Chair Review, Cattails, Nothing. No One. Nowhere., and others. Mor info at www.tidalpoolpoet.com
Susan,
ReplyDeleteMasterful use of our common lexicon matched in balance to the lexicon of science, biology, astrophysics.
--- the first two stanzas could read as a primer to writing haiku, Master Issa's approach comes to mind.
--- a gentle position of declaring a "philosophy in the last verse.
JanBenTexas
thank you for such a detailed comment.
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