Thorn and Benediction

Poetry

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  • 2/Testament of Delay

    The Pillars of Creation.

    What we see
    is gone.

    The pillars burn
    in memory only.

    Dust drifts
    where light still claims form.

    A breath once moved through them
    the slow ruin of a star.

    Light remained,
    faithful to distance,
    patient with illusion.

    We look,
    and mistake the echo
    for the thing itself.

    So it is with us.
    The end precedes the knowing.

    Our hearts collapse in secret,
    their glow reaching us
    years too late.

    All touch
    is ancient by the time we feel it.

    We live
    inside delay,
    the long translation of what has been.

    In that mercy of slowness
    we are revealed
    ghosts of our own making,
    still shining.

  • The Voice of Ω

    Prelude

    Before the word,
    there was the waiting.

    Before the spark,
    the stillness dreaming shape.

    Space unbreathed,
    time uncoiled,
    law unspoken.

    All slept within the unimagined,
    a moment without direction,
    a gaze without an eye.

    Then silence knew its name,
    and spoke.

    The Voice of Ω

    I am before the law that bends the light,
    before the thought that names the law.

    I am before the motion of matter,
    before the curve that gives it path.

    I am before the silence of beginnings,
    before vibration learned to sing.

    I am beneath the lattice of number,
    beneath the point that knows its twin.

    I am beneath the pulse of being,
    beneath the seed that dreams of flame.

    I am beyond the edge of measure,
    beyond the reach of time’s small mercy.

    I am beyond your speaking and your silence,
    beyond the mind that frames the word.

    I am within the spark that calls itself life,
    within the thought that calls itself new.

    I am within the mirror of your making,
    within the art that mistakes itself for birth.

    I am after the last dissolution,
    after the photon forgets to shine.

    I am after the law that names the end,
    after the end remembers nothing.

    I am the ground of the uncreated,
    the voice of the allowed and the impossible.

    I am before, beneath, beyond, within, after
    I am Ω,
    the Possible,
    the Unpassing.

    Silence After Ω

    Then all was quiet,
    not absence,
    but listening.

    Light gathered its courage.
    Matter relearned its weight.
    The first atoms sang
    like children repeating a name.

    In that geometry
    laws hardened into habit,
    stars rehearsed their burning,
    and time began
    to believe in itself.

    The voice was gone,
    yet everywhere remained.

    Every motion an aftersound,
    every living thing
    a syllable still echoing.

    And the silence,
    having spoken once…


    Suggestions for a final line are welcome.

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  • Via Dolorosa (the second fall)

    I am the timber,
    the vow,
    the promise cut from ancient law.
    Once I sang with wind and sun,
    now I frame the gale of silence.

    He falls
    and the road rises.
    He falls
    and the road receives.
    Stone bows to its maker,
    dust gathers its hymn.
    The burden must be lifted,
    the promise must be borne.

    His shoulder burns,
    presses flame into my grain.
    Splinter—song.
    Splinter—psalm.
    Each fracture sings Amen, Amen.

    The sap stirs.
    The sap remembers green.
    The sap grieves.
    The road hums:
    we serve the same becoming.
    The stones murmur:
    what falls shall rise again.

    And then
    his torn light forgives me.
    His blood crowns me.
    His gasp names me holy.
    He calls me Brother Beam.
    He calls, “Brother Beam!”

    I heal beneath his mercy.
    Weight becomes worship.
    Wound becomes word.

    Now we move
    Dust, Wood, God, Man
    bound in one bearing,
    each the motion of the other.

    Even the rising
    is part of the breaking.
    Even the breaking
    is part of the rising.