A Seductive Display of Vanity

Picture of one human under vast skies,
Feet planted in the sand;
To the human, the stance is firm,
But we know better
– Don’t we?

With no intent toward subtracting a single atom from the worth of the one,
Surely we must know and see those feet
Planted in that surf-pounded sand, ‘neath those vast West skies,
Be themselves perhaps noble;
at minimum, like the step-child of the Divine,
Yet having themselves no root or anchor,
No foundation on the Crust.
No less than one human,
Perhaps also no more,
Feet on soft ground with all that transient, laughable modesty,
All the resistant humility.

Scene and human rendered first in one medium
Then another;
Oils, then latex, Crayola, then ultrablack ultrafine pencil, b&w high contrast             film, then pixels
– Just pixels.
No more focus no more picture but only for an instant and we’re back:
The players in the scene now stripped down further toward the essential
& the True
No more, still no less.

This is the Edge.

Line of earth and sea, the Edge!
The rendezvous between that which supports these bagged bodies of ours and that which brought us forth in the first place.

The Edge…
Thin line between waters above and waters below
Real thin line that Creator tossed in there –
What was it, Day 2? –
And the longer we look, the more we question the line.
Is it still there?
How much time does it have left?

Our eyes, viewing all the same level of magnification,
Prevents us ever from really saying the true form of that outer Edge,
The one splitting Earth, the island from cosmos, the sea.
We ought see the planets and stars,
And especially those galaxies and nebulae,
Hovering just above us, all along that dome of sky.
Huge, bright, dazzling
The most terrifying and seductive display of vanity any of us have known.
This is how we should see that Edge.
Sun beginning to set over land
(This is the Atlantic, of course)
Water warms, waves reach toward sky and then the one person standing.
The skies ought then turn translucent and offer up their naked vengeful flawless perfection.

Even e’er without root or cement, the land holds the one human,
While the sea ever calls,
“Come Here.”
And the one human knows the sea – & the Edge –
Makes substantial part within them (which is true!)
But may that one human at the beach
– well now, all us humans at the beach, in truth –
Know they (we!) in turn make substantial part of the Sea.
The Sea.
It’s not just to say that the Edge is within us,
It’s that we are the Edge.

So you can’t fight the Edge.
Can’t fight the shore.
May you (we!) surrender to that final sacred fatal assimilation –
& may you (we!) then find all the universe assimilated in turn
Inside and Out.

Give in.