From Here to Eternity

By John Herlihy

As far as the eye can see rolled endless sands,

Undulating as a vast ocean across ancient lands.

The eye sees a bounteous vision it cannot hold,

As infinite as the heavens and equally as bold.

Sheer emptiness enough to take the breath away,

Yet imaginary fingers beckon one there to stay.

An expanse of movement captured in the dunes,

Shifting sands create patterns no one assumes.

Without a bush or a tree, the wind makes no cry,

The lone cacti, with their thorns, may utter a sigh.

A relentless sun burns from its great white whole,

Gathering the forces from the burning fire it stole.

No one ever found or will find any of my footsteps,

To make a mark, then gone in the wind with regrets.

From this desolation, there is a short way to eternity,

A realm where we internalize all that we will ever see.

During the day, the glorious blue sky bright and hard,

At night, the sky turned miraculous and brightly starred.

It has come clear what empty in a treeless desert means,

Harsh light and dusty sand to be precisely what it seems.

The light is what convinces me, so blinding and heartless,

Survival the one thing left in mind, otherwise thoughtless.

At twilight, the harsh beauty pours into the empty heart,

To treasure all the emotions that we are reluctant to part.

The vast canopy of stars ran across the celestial dome,

Glittering rivers of light in search of an ancestral home.

The Milky Way streams thru the darkness as if in flight,

With peep holes into an alternative universe in the night.

Alone and on foot in this primordial sea of shadowy dusk,

Parched sand under my feet while in the air a hint of musk.

I suddenly feel afraid, lost in this uncompromising dustbowl,

Powerless amid forces well beyond my reckoning or control.

Let us not hesitate to mention the dramatic, flaming sunset,

The lingering, indeed dying, vision we hold, lest we ever forget.

The horizon a thin line of mouth besmeared with red lipstick,

Slowing burning down the taper to die at the end of the wick.

I lay me down upon the still hot sand, as if falling and falling,

Blended within the starkness of desert as if dying and dying.

I look aloft into the dark night of the heavens to see a mystery;

I now know what it really means to travel from here to eternity.