The We Of I
by Odin Roark

So, here we are,
the we of I,
the I of we.

How separate our togetherness,
How lonely the crowd,
How indivisible the destiny.

Whether from a house stately,
Or one crumbling anew,
Whether haunted,
Restored,
Or destroyed,
Eventually but an empty field
Will grace the mapping
Of one’s next beginning.

How at a loss we remain,
While weeds know not end,
Nor the cockroach,
Or the leaf resting as mulch,
For now.

How resilient the footsteps,
The past of conquerors’ sandals,
The present of sneaker donned minions,
The future of leaden space-boot-gravity.

Beside our landmark of time,
Roils the country road,
The super highway,
The elevated super train,
The chopper blades
Of a hovering ubiquitous future.

How venturesome beginnings and ends,
Coalescing as a singularity without restraint,
Even as patience visits the lily pod nightly,
Giving rest for its waning tomorrows,
Wonder to a child’s eyes,
An anomaly to the frog’s peek-a-boo life,
And cyclic presence to still more yesterdays...
Coming.

We remain here and there,
Be it soil of the past,
Airborne ashes of time’s migration ,
Or per chance an echo
Bouncing from surface to surface,
Rock to steel,
Village to town,
Radio wave to ionosphere,
Reflecting,
Refracting
Diffracting,
The ever-discovery
Old life becoming new life,
Elsewhere to elsewhere,
Somewhere to everywhere.

Forever knows best the adventure,
Waiting for the we of I,
The I of we,
And yes…
The it of its
To move on.

How wondrous creation’s atoms that never die.