Carver of Spaces

 

Firmament

A thin blue line, the scantest sapphire wisp,

To separate all this terrestrial sphere

And every living wight that here subsists –

The blinking whelp, the seer of many years –

From cold and airless black. My chest feels tight

To think this sliver might accommodate

The rollercoasting history of life.

Yet ancient eyes looked up to contemplate

A sturdy dome of lapis lazuli,

A gleaming vault, divinely-wrought, designed

To dam up all the waters of the sky.

Copernicus and comets undermined

And cracked this Heaven's pavement, still I feel

The promise of that firmamental blue;

Solidity dissolves but to reveal

A deeper constancy, a law more true.

 

For all is motion, world on whirling world

Careening through the night, yet kept on course

And governed by the same momentous word

That called them forth. We like to reinforce

Our tender faith with metaphors of stone

But, truth be told, our trust is better placed

In neither rock nor sky, but Him alone

Who carved His little wards this breathing space.

 

For we ourselves are dust, we'll blow away,

Our greatest feats but eddies in the breeze.

The One alone who wrote our DNA

Can recollect our atoms, should He please.

Yes we are dust, but turning in the light,

Mere motes adrift in glory borne aloft;

We have no up nor down, no left nor right,

We're wheeling through the dark – but never lost.

 

I chuckle at our insubstantial sky

Then watch it fade to twilight's mystic hue –

The wildest, deepest lapis lazuli

Beguiles my startled soul with boundless blue.

 

January 2023