IN PRAISE OF INSIGNIFICANCE

by Dan Brady

Like the seasons ascending forever

Like the subtle curvature

Of the earth.

Just as the baby is born

And the elderly perish,

Just as the pattern is formed

And too soon surrendered----

I am cyclical.

Like the dissonance of traffic jams

The howling winds of circumstance

I pace like leaves in the summer breeze

And tantalize myself.

Every merciful thought, every utterance of freedom,

Every vagrant heart

Resides within and without me.

Every crooning mother, swooning lover,

And headless mob---

We are all here;

We are all.

Existence forfeits nothing

and gives it all without thanks.

Sacrifices its Self

without hesitation.

The swirling dynamo of creation

Poised to fall.

Crownless forever.

Still master of All.

How can I, a microcosm of consciousness,

Hope to sing a sweeter song?

How can any soul, ambitious or not,

ever reach an unreachable goal?

Is our station really so lowly

We must rise and rise and rise

All to witness the world far below us,

just a pin-prick of color in limitless black,

Without love---all alone?

If we see no need for a redemption

What need is there for going for Gold?

Your ballast is my ballast and every ballast since;

Each particle is one of the whole.

Each ending intersects with the next one

Like a river headed home.

Skipping forward in every direction

To the collector great and old.

Poised perfectly atop the fence

It all seems so simple,

Unbearably so.

Only lasts a moment

But lingers there eternal---

No one is any less deserving than the other;

Your dream is no more beautiful than your brothers.

(Yours may bloom, and his may flounder,

But we all surrender eventually to our Mother's.)

We go unnoticed, we go hungry, we go home,

while the axis spins beneath us.

While the stars collide and divide into perfect dying pictures

Each man, woman, and child is a masterpiece---

Each deserves our admiration.

From basements and bathrooms, sweatshops and prisons

We mourn, we laugh, we cheer

All to feel connected for an instant.

All our discarded years recollected

Put neatly in a catalogue of dimly-lit remembrances.

Of each one of us, no longer one of us,

But all of us together.

Swirling, twisting, existing

Forever...

Infinite, indiscriminate

and nameless.

Forgotten or remembered?

Delivered or surrendered?

We each get our taste of the other.

The universe forgives us,

and forgets that very instant.

She leaves us to our wanderings

Scrapes what's left of our lives off the plate

Into a garden all men go--- godless, generic or great...

To be recycled, reenvisioned, and retethered.

Unsure as we were, like the lame in the fog,

Which direction we were ever

really heading.