Wonderings

By Jane Roberts

This immense property,

sky and earth

ringed by galaxies,

suddenly seems miniature,

a toy world

in some vast inside,

never exteriorized,

a tiny cell couched tenderly

within a cosmic forehead,

our treetops

the waving nerve ends

of a god’s brain,

tumbling leaves, his thoughts

that rise and fall and drop

to the rich mind’s floor.

Weird vision!

But suppose our seasons are

the cellular commotion of some

world-mind,

and each summer is but of one message

that blinks between neurons

as large as stars

while we

live ninety nights and days

at the bottom

of a god’s dream.

And what about us, so free-wheeling,

soul-eyes opening on earth stuff?

Are we gods in miniature,

containing within us

other creatures who meet

in our swirling tissues

and call them worlds?

Do my summer thoughts

bring trees to fruit

and lilacs blooming

in some cellscape within my skin,

where toy people

break off apple blossoms

and nibble

at my heart’s fruits?

Do my rages

cause storms that terrify,

shaking the brain’s skies, sending

shrieking dolls running for shelter?

I hope not.

Yet we kill ants

who live just beneath our feet,

and just one step

can avalanche a whole ant village,

but we take it for granted

that their live is so small

they don’t miss it at all.

Still, it makes you think:

Do the ants call us Fate?

Is thunder really

a god’s voice

impinging on our universe,

distorted into slow rumbles

that crack our clouds?

And do our whispers fall

like raindrops in other worlds,

or drop into the soil

and turn into seeds and grow?

Idle speculation?

No. Sitting here once

I glimpsed gigantic forms

looking over the rim

of the universe,

peeking in quietly

as if not to disturb

our reality.

They blended with the earth and sky,

yet three large windows showed me

only one partial torso

on which houses, trees, and streets

were superimposed.

I had to look twice to see

just where they merged.

In that instant my rooms shrunk,

and I felt that our world, tiny, all snug,

hung in some gigantic inner space,

and I sprang up with alarm.

The forms were gone.

My rooms snapped back to their normal state,

but I’d seen them through other eyes,

and that sight

still intruded.

Yet if our life is so minute,

how can our loves and hates

so hugely rise,

or one day sometimes seem so immense

that we can never get out of it,

or one word

strike so vividly

that it brings tears?

What dear experience is this?

What points of power intersect

that you and I and each ant live?

As I write,

one ant, in fact,

speeds the floor,

intent as if on business,

all legs going as fast as they can go,

across the kitchen rug continent

to the mountain reaches of the wall.

How massive this room must seem,

its furniture

fixtures in a firmament

familiar but alien,

in which even an ant knows he’s not alone,

and that the room has other purposes

that go on about him all the time,

as becomes obvious when,

for instance, one ant climbs

on top of a jar, and I knock him off,

or one wanders into the sink

just when I’m running the water on.

Sometimes my giant hand saves him,

as I let him crawl on it, then shake him loose,

or distracted, too late, I forget,

and see he’s fallen to his fate.

Yet the ants know secret nooks

and crevices,

inaccessible to me,

and inner commotions and concerns go on

just inches within the white woodwork.

Miniature joys and agonies

quake and rise

in generations of ants and flies

just beneath the surface of my days,

of which I’m completely unaware.

Even my cat is a furry giant

to an ant,

an impediment

to be circled carefully

like a mountain

that might collapse

at any time.

So perhaps the universe

has other purposes than ours,

and trees and earth and even stars

are furniture

in a different kind of galaxy

than we surmise.

Marionnettes géantes Royal de Luxe à Nantes

***

Being fair and reasonable

will earn you respect and admiration,

but being genuinely kind

will make you a total love magnet.

Pucker up. Go for love magnet.

~ Mike Dooley