Aurora

in ‘yes’ and ‘no’, all things consist

In the beginning, I thought dawn was only a color,
a pink rinsing the black out of the sky
like washing a stained plate.

The old engraving says otherwise.

It says: AURORA,
and beneath the word, a clean radiance
shines down as if illumination were a decision.

In the lower portion of the page
a sphere floats,
interlocking bands, braided like vows,
and every inch insists on eyes.

Not eyes that flirt or soften.
Only wide, unblinking eyes.

I look at it and feel watched
by the architecture of existence.

As if the world is not made of things
          but of attention.
As if matter is only a way
          for spirit to keep its appointments.

I want to be practical about this.
to keep my mind from roaming the perimeter.
The image won’t allow it.

It is too exact,
the calm terror of it,
the meticulous halo of rays,
the globe half-entering the frame.

I read about a shoemaker,
how a ray of sunlight hit a pewter dish
in his kitchen,
and for fifteen minutes
the ordinary cracked open
like an egg.

Fifteen minutes,
the span of boiling water.

In that brief seizure of light
he said he saw the signatures of all things,
the hidden structure in grass,
the spiritual scaffolding of the universe.

I understand this too well.

I have had moments,
not grand, not cinematic,
when the faucet ran,
when a spoon flashed,
when the window struck the table
at the exact angle of truth,
and suddenly everything was alive
and looking back.

As if the world is not dead at all
but breathing,
     breathing conflict,
     breathing resolution,
     breathing the strange compromise
     of wound and remedy.

The sphere of eyes makes me think:
eternity is not endless time
but endless seeing.

Maybe God is not a judge
but a witness
who never closes His eyes.

Maybe that is why I ache,
because I want, sometimes,
to be unseen.
To exist without being recorded
by the silent surveillance of meaning.

But the engraving insists:
even the blank margin has a pulse.

Dawn rises.

I stand at my sink
waiting for the flash,
waiting to be interrupted
by the unbearable brightness
of what is true.

When it comes,
when light touches the ordinary
and makes it sacred against my will,
I feel the Wonder-Eye turning,
its bands tightening and loosening,
and think:

This is the landscape of being alive,
not paradise or punishment but interlocking,
eyes within eyes within eyes,
a cosmos that cannot stop watching itself become.




[An expansive mind takes all. Endlessly whole. Self-consuming. Self-creating.]