Monday, January 24, 2022

THE IMPOSSIBLE PRESENT

Eventually, every one of us
must bow 
to the mystery:

that our life 
was a gift 
we could not have been granted

because we 
were not standing there prior 
to accept.

And yet, 
somehow, we received it
without our ever touching—

like infrared heat 
from distant forked lightning, 

or the faint crackle of pirate 
radio stations,

or a radical new theory's 
full implications.

To think,
none of this 
was even close 

to predestined;
but now, how much is so 
coolly presupposed?

But the real question is: 
what'll we do with this gift 
we were given—

this deep and soulful 
undulating pattern

of presence and absence
which simulates
an existence—

now that it's taken a shape 
we can recognize 

and a name that we know 
as our own?