In the Old Beginning

In the old beginning while the world spun
a different orbit, drawing upon a
large wild nature, was life a burden?
Born small and powerless, each night and day
hiding in sanctuaries, traveling
for food and safety, hunting and hunted,
armed with only the hand tools we can bring,
before the naming of the names of God,
were we worst off, naked, less possessive?
Hungry for what hasn’t nor shouldn’t be,
unable to demand which life to live,
we were in a paradise, weren’t we?

Each morning greeted by more explosions
a hemisphere apart, scenes of neighbors
and neighborhoods diminished by fractions
with each bomb burst boom breaking what took years
to make: a building or a back the same,
suddenly each an object in the way,
another target in a weapon’s aim,
a small ordinary act of a day,
a vignette of an on-going story,
without an ending that can be written,
able to find peace for everybody,
in this civilized moment we live in.

Maybe there are no words in language yet
created to speak what is a secret.
Like some cave painting whose colors are wet
the meaning’s not the metaphor of it.
Buried deep in an impossible place,
discovered by a random accident,
painted by an artist without a face,
outside natural light, incandescent,
the truth somehow survives for all to see.
Perhaps it has its start as a picture,
drawn on a private wall from memory,
explanations can always come later.


Ben Gage