Beyond the Voice

Who would say it. Who would say it. But it is, and that is it. There is a voice that cuts through all things. Always near and always far. It is in the ribbons of clouds nesting on the distant hills. It is in the distant hills embraced by the ribbons of clouds. The day heats and the clouds become thinner and thinner. They eventually disappear and there it remains. It leans on our ear here and there, calls out from screens, from pages, from the mouths of lovers. A clear consistency contains it, logic floating in a soft cloud. I give you this voice. All you need do is find it. Looking under the covers of your life, find it soaked through here, there and everywhere. But having found it there is no standing still. Bracing the great loss and taking its sustenance. Facing the great loss to enter its substance.

I myself cannot say. Today's surroundings an old-folks home. A visitor no less and not much more. Departure lounge of the world. Here the matter is not of who would leave, but when they should do so. No less to say who indeed will stay. Old Squeamish standing by the fence. It is only his memory has departed, the rest of him stranded here now. Every day is a new day, each time the first time for everything. His pockets are stuffed with teabags and matches. Something remains of the past – embedded in his mind. It still makes him move in certain ways. It's the snail, he says. He watches it make its way across the path. Leisurely and at ease. It moves at snails pace, and to watch it he too must find snails pace. The snail may falter in the sizzling sun, but free of interfering eyeballs it may fulfill its quest unmolested. If not watching the snails then it is watching the flies. The flies the flies the flies, watching the flies flying. They move faster than the snails but to watch them creates the same wide space. Wide eyes and an empty mind. With wide eyes watching the wide arcs they slice through space. Wide arcs, straights and sudden turns they describe unimaginable patterns as they cut their swathe through the sky.

But the quest, the quest. Today ours is not to discuss they ways of flies and snails. To mention them in passing perhaps, but leave to the detailers the details. To the detailers the details of the hail and rails and the tales of snails. But our quest is not so easily rested.

The mornings rain beats busily on the roof. The rains reign is one of peace to those who listen to it and understand its ways. Rain falling throughout the body. The wind blows this way – blowing once blowing twice it blows the rains voice away. Blows it quiet and the rain obeys. The pauses are long but the rain cannot hold back. Can wait a little but not against pregnant time. At first random pattern of drops falling. Fat drops that just cannot hang there indefinitely. Having left their place in the sky they are committed to gravity and the earth. Their random rhythms become the composers voice – I am it says. I am that I may be  For some time the voices of the wind and of the rain tussle and clash. Eventually they emerge as one single voice. One voice throughout one body.

The rain continues in a most irresistible way. Continuing the irresistible way it is the irresistible way itself. How can you resist me when I am everywhere. In through the mouth and out the rain pours. Steams out through the pores, rains through the eyes, and flows out through the snake and poppy. Under your feet and falling on your head and soaking through the skin, bones, marrow and beyond. Rains voice moves through this body and brings fecundity as it goes. Your body is of me as it is me. The animals bay in agreement and the vegetables, being quietly spoken, accord their agreement in their own gentle way. Who would disagree. Stones and dead wood only.

The rain - it stops then starts then stops. The world goes about its business and the clouds drift idly about. They make no haste. Barely seem to move, but over time can be seen to have shifted about. From there to here to there they go. Moist air capturing the fragrance of the moment. They are the fragrant moment itself. Here there is life's activity happening within the soil. There they take the life of the lavender and diffuse it all over everywhere, that all may enjoy it. The fragrant fondling of lavenders lovely lullaby.

Over on the western hills the clouds have gathered as if to confer. To confer amongst the conifers. Amongst the pod carps amongst the grasses and woody shrubs that survive in snow and ice. Where the clouds go thick silence settles. The color of fallen flowers is enhanced until swallowed by the soupiness. The silence surrounds all, allowing even the tiniest of sounds to ring clearly. That we may see them all the clearer. The rocks cracking and the pebbles rolling down the slope. The silent voice that surrounds no thing endlessly pouring from all things and no-thing.

Eye of the King

Two gentlemen reflecting on the starry nights sky. They narrate its features as they pick them out. Look ! the eel, the net, and over there the single lady star traveling from constellation to constellation. Even the stars are out looking for love for warmth for a singular spot to stay. Passing by this canoe and that canoe, the places from where all peoples came.

One gentleman leans forward, the hairy bits on his face neatly trimmed he carries a dignity as if left behind from some archaic time. Some foreigners arrived here and forced their stories upon us. Changed the names of the stars into all sorts of things. Different languages and stories from across the world. Now the people are dazed and confused. They no longer ponder the stars. Nor gaze at the sea, nor study the birds and bugs living in the litter of the forests floor. Nor the cycles and seasons of flowering and fruiting and seeding and feeding. They look at the things created by man but forget the things that created man.

The other man looks on. He is much younger and wears a type of dignity manufactured in his imagination. Leans on his curly walking stick, yet his bones and skin and eyes speak not.of age. Perhaps he spent his years listening to the deliberations of wise old men. Whatever the case may be he sits the children of the world on his knee and tells them the stories of old. The young, well they are young and what would they know of such things. They move very fast and know very little, if anything at all. They move so fast that they don't hear the words, and only slow when they bump into things and hurt themselves black and blue.

Not sure of who they are, the young look to those of far away lands. Surely they are more real than us. More complete, the life that we are missing must be happening in them. Not sure of who they are if indeed they are anyone at all. Anyone anybody or anything. The faraway friends followers of the disjointed way. You can fight the systems and structures and the castes and creeds, but the stars will always remain aloof. They will watch on from their distant place. When you have moved-on, they will watch over those that replace you. Again and again, on and on. You can fight the mendacity manipulation mediocrity and madness, even to their finish in falsities final fling. But you will still swim in the gentle breeze and paddle from thought to thought until you strive and reach beyond it.

The stars are immortal says mister almost old mister almost wise. Immortal if indeed they lived. Immortal or not they watch things as they come and go. Like bubbles like foam, one day their time will come too. But until then they will have to make do without. Without time they enter ours and watch from there. When when their time does come they will fall from the sky, into the emptiness beyond into nothing itself. Into the empty space inside outside on all sides and none at all.

There in silence they move by night by day by night. Coursing in this way they sit immovably still. Each in accord with all in their own allotted space. The wind blows but they hold their ground. Eventually the wind fails. The wind fails and the words must find another means to move. Traveling beyond their narrow field eventually they too fail. Leaving only the spaces between the spaces.

As they do as they do. The words disintegrate and return to their common source. Into the empty ground. Into the thought behind the wind. Into the wind behind the thought.

Moving this way and that the stars follow their years course. Moving this way and that the islands stop to watch. One will sit under this star and one under that. This is how we move about in the big sea. Looking straight through clouds and storms. The younger man tests the old master – old Mars, where is he now ? Pointing through the floor through the ocean through the earth and right out the other side. Over there he says.

In the ocean the fish eat and eat and swim and swim. In the forest the birds eat and eat and walk and fly and hop about and sing. The eels travel along their rivers and the trees bear their flowers and fruit. All with just the slightest of thought and always in accord. Always following their regular rhythm, always to a slightly different tune. Five lady stars rise in the east, so many moons since have been since they last were seen. Time to depart for the wild west coast. Fantastic fish in a fine feeding frenzy. Lucky lads might land one big lot.

The stars party lasts a month a day a week or more. The shortest day of winters night, the longest night of winters day. The new moon reclines in the sky. Moves so slow along its way. The legendary heroes of old appear in the eastern sky. Appearing as a group they appear as pieces of ourselves. Pieces of ourselves with no body from which they have been removed, no whole diminished. They've had their day and sit on the edges of time and watch. We appear in them and they in us. Only the most ill of humor would refuse to see it so. The one wind that stands still as all the parts swirl around in it. None different from the other, yet no two alike.

©Gregory Streets 2006