WON'T MEET MOST OF YOU IN A LIFETIME

WON’T MEET MOST OF YOU IN A LIFETIME

Won’t meet most of you in a lifetime

and know there are six billion of us

and more coming all the time, each trying

to interpret the sign of their own star,

you know, the one that nobody else can see

but for a few rays of light breaking

through the clouds here and there,

that says, this is the way to shine,

this is the way to shine, and that includes

black holes everywhere as well.

Whether you can see through it or not

as a plagiarism of water and sand

every mirage has its own meaning,

every star belongs to a different zodiac,

each with their own totems, mandalas,

and shapeshifting constellations, each

their own houses of worship and disrepute,

we’re all wearing on our foreheads

written in between the lines of fate

like a sidereal bandanna, each

a meme of one we’re hoping will allow

someone to recognize us in isolation

like a prison tat that says we’ve paid our dues

for the last thousand lifetimes without parole

and have a right to be here as well as anyone

because we’ve done our time standing up

just to be alive, whether you’re running from it

or not. Everyone’s got a different approach

to their own departure, and though

there is no gate they must go through,

there’s a garden they must spend

some time in for awhile, telling

the flowers what the roots of our names mean

each as unique as a snowflake

on a petal or an eyelid or a furnace.

Each a theme of their own picture-music,

our lives are not sub-plots of the main narrative.

There’s a whole symphony in the tintinnabula,

like a drop of water reflecting the entire universe

just the same as there is in the first violins.

And everyone brings their own instrument to the jam

whether it be the wind in the silver Russian olives,

a tuba, a burning guitar, or the fossil of the lyre

that used to sing the dead up from hell

to a day of show and tell, and it doesn’t matter

what kind of music you make, whether

it’s the choral riot of your favourite nocturnal animals in a zoo,

or the distant plectra of a hidden nightcreek

playing solo on a harpsichord in a lonely sacred grove,

or you’re riffing on futuristic mystic mantras

like Tibetan prayer bowls that used to sound

like a waterclock of urns, as long as you’re adding

your singularity like the longing high note of a nightbird

to the dendritic staves of the trees. Even the silence sings.

And what is it we’re all really longing for

in the solitary labyrinths we’ve made

of the complexity of our desires,

if it isn’t a world elaborated from

the prime fractal of our love,

as if it fell to each of us now, not god,

that weight was removed from her shoulders

the moment our cosmic egg hatched

and we took to our own wings,

eagles and fireflies and Icarus alike

to provide the image of light upon light

like a masterpiece we leave behind us

that’s everybody’s signed like a self-portrait

of who we were to each other for awhile

when we stood in wonder and awe

at what was arrayed before us knowing

it’s the exact likeness of everyone,

and the star in the eye that’s turned toward us

as if each of us were the direction of prayer

is the same one we’ve been following for light years

like the magi seeking the source of their own radiance,

candles in the dark wondering where

the light’s coming from in billions of creative mirrors

falling on everyone alike like rain and eyes

so that before we close them

like two dew drops of stereoscopic water

falling back to our roots like our last words

from the tips of the tongues of the stargrass

to dream up new blossoms in our sleep

like new moons budding on a dead branch,

we each realize that we’re the myth of origin,

the alpha and omega of all things that begin and end

as well as the unattainable for which there is no metaphor

placed well within the creative reach of everyone of us

though if I were to give it a shot as a poet, I’d say,

knowing what I know of this life in the arts,

like the habitable planets and ripening desert moons

of the low-hanging fruits of our hearts.

PATRICK WHITE