featured image | Ray Bilcliff

If My Soul is Stone

If my soul is stone
then all this anxiety 
is glacial till
moving across my body.
Rough edges are dulled
by the constant rubbing
of worry, working away,
chipping and fracking 
in the night, then spending the day
sanding and smoothing
all the broken places
with rationalizing and regret.
Eventually, all this stone-soul searching
tumbles everything into pebbles
and I feel them grinding and rumbling
when I move.
Silence helps them to settle.

If my soul is stone
it will find solace in its origins
in the earliest moments
of the universe.
All this anxiety is left over 
from the first rupture 
of light breaking through cloud.

If my soul is stone
it is an ancient remnant
of the earliest coupling
of creation and cataclysm.
My body imitates the strange mating
of gravity and fusion 
in energy that surges and collapses
in patterns and particles.
Anxiety comes and goes.
When it sees me watching,
it waves.

Before Eternity Whispered

All these words are just gossip
about the cosmic secrets.
The truth is beyond description.
Poets prattle and praise the heavens
as if they can translate the mysteries
that science measures and commodifies 
 as time and space.
The truth is silent.
Beyond the dalliance of pen and page.
Imagination comes close
to reflecting the miracles
of death and dust
becoming life and water.
Blue-blessing skies and winter-weary fields
come close
to conversation with infinity.
But the truth is silent.
Before words, before images,
before nothing became everything,
before eternity whispered, “Now”
all creation lingered in love
waiting to create this moment
with you.
Together we pause
in the silent starlight
before we open our hearts
and sing.

Return to Kosmos Edition 24, Issue 2, The Call of Your Heart