To Have Been…
by Odin Roark

To have been a growing face in redwood bark
Looking down for millennia
As children ooh and ah

To have been the roiling mist beneath Niagara
Knowing centuries of nature’s basso profondo
Would oscillate in perpetuity

To have been a bow-caressed string
Resonating the joy from Joshua Bell’s Stradivarius
Or the absorbing ebony of Glen Gould’s Steinway
The carefully laden ink of a Shakespeare sonnet
Perhaps a Neruda poem of love

To have been of such privilege
Would have required suspended reality
Allowing our imagination to fulfill our lives

Some would argue it so

For among us making ready
Our next cycle of existence
To have been…
Merely becomes our visceral treasure
Left behind…

This time