The Voices of Poetry

What if ...
We are all on experiential journeys in which we live our lives,
and that is the purpose of our existences?
We build, plan, teach, save and do all the other things that come our way.
Life was meant to be lived, felt, inhaled, witnessed, talked about,
interacted with, examined, and discovered.
Life is in the doing.
It is like a long metaphorical treadmill that is slightly inclined—
always in motion, always running, and mostly uphill.
It takes effort to push onward with our journeys as
we each travel on our own conveyance with a common destination.

Some call that end-place Heaven, Providence, or the Promised Land.
The name matters little except to say it is somewhere beyond our logical
powers to elucidate, beyond our mathematical prowess to circumscribe,
perhaps in a dimensionless place that is a quantum leap above life on Earth.
Still, we know it intuitively—in a sunrise that is beyond our abilities to duplicate;
in the beauty of a flower that we cannot create; in the face of a
child that we cannot create on our own.

Dangers also exist everywhere both here and out in the universe
that are beyond our abilities to overcome.
It is difficult for us to imagine a Black Hole that can swallow stars
or entire galaxies, from which there is no escape.
On Earth, we can surmount many obstacles;
Out there, not so much.

Oh, there are many joys on Earth, from parenting, to singing, to dancing;
and to laughter, to music, to feeding the animals, to watching a sunset.
But these are transitory, mere glimpses of what awaits us.
We don’t have ready answers to all questions, issues, or obstacles that arise.
Many are among our challenges to solve.
They help to expand our minds so that the next challenge is approached
with a firmer resolve to find answers.

We fear death and judgment, two fictions of our imaginations—
or perhaps better stated as fictions of someone else’s imagination.
Yes, there are impostors, gangsters, thugs, and many others who seem
to be driven by greed, and an uncaring mindset of me-isms who
can make life miserable for us.
From a grander vantage point, they all fall from grace in time.
We live, we learn, we progress, and we eventually overcome them.
Perhaps, after a suitable educational period, they are put back onto their
treadmills with heavier loads to carry, but with clearer visions of what can be.

Yet through it all ...

We, too, have loved the stars with fondness
As we bathed within their light
And reached for just a firmer grasp
Of justice in its flight.

Each setback left its painful scars
Like shadows in the night
That etched our souls with sadness
Before the coming light.

As surely as there’s a Heaven
There is little more to say
Than poets gave us words and wisdom
That helped us on our way.