The Great Wave

An ode to loss and change from a rational mind coming to terms with the fleeting nature of history.

Figure 1 - The North Wind goes over the sea.[1]

 

Fixed grey faces gaze silently through their glaze, evoking memories of a time gone by and of lives that were,

But where is yesterday? When was tomorrow? An eternity of fleeting moments lost to the seething surf,

Lives beyond capture by any tree-lined garden of descent, graven on some far-distant tablet beyond the sight of man, save the muse of Parmenides,

For lifeless and textureless is the world beyond the duir, daubed in questionable hue from the palette of want.

Lain waste, their legacies of stone; the First Ones, long passed into shadow as though but a dream, bequeathing debt immortal,

Fading, failing, falling into darkness, unto dissolution, decay and dust, fettered by the illimitable dice,

Events and stories forsaken by the relentless arrow to lie fallow in their starless stasis betwixt the pages of every passing instant,

Celestial progenies cast adrift and abandoned by nature’s unmindful Doxa, unworthy of all remembrance.

From mankind, whose words be louder than its thoughts, writ in blackest quill, the dogma that serves the meek through the mighty,

While sages patiently strive to learn the magical music by which all things dance, but finding only purest melody and no tempo,

A world of adamantine illusion, wishfully tamed and told through the balancing runes,

A lost chord stripped of all harmony, and the myste with two faces poised in suspended masquerade.

So great the gift of time — the giver of Life, the æon of being, the conjurer of cause, and yet the arrow by which we fall,

Weep not for the past, nor for the lost moments, parting kisses, or stolen memories,

The price we pay for life is change — is wax and wane — is loss and gain, but the thief of days wields an arrow fashioned and shaped by conscious minds,

Taking the coin from our mouths, the thief knowingly smiles back with our own faces.

To the end of days, when all our suns have set on the crimson tide of life's blood,

When all our whispers have fallen silent on the Bible-black firmament, and their echoes have all flown their paper prisons and coulomb cages,

From the last glimmers of life, dream-dashed and robbed of love and hope, still clinging to its rock,

One final desperate cry will be heard afore The Great Wave:

...There can be no rhyme for there was no reason!

Figure 2 - Just as they bent down to take the rose a big dense snowdrift came and carried them away.[2]

 

Copyright © Tony Proctor
#Poetry #Science #Time

Honorable Mention in the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE) competition of 2017: Winners.

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[1] "The North Wind goes over the sea", illustration, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Kay Rasmus Nielsen (1886–1957), illustrator (1914); attribution: [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

[2] "Just as they bent down to take the rose a big dense snowdrift came and carried them away", illustration, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Kay Rasmus Nielsen (1886–1957), illustrator (1914); attribution: [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.