Space/Time Onetinuum

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

For Charles Randall Stanfield

Though you are you, and you are you alone,

Unique, your essence is revealed in full

When set and seen beside the Whole and known

As part of web and mesh, a basketful

Phenomenon of gems, of rubies, pearls

And microscopic glories and of vast

Unknowns, of vacuums* of space, of whirls

Of moons and planets, constellations cast

Through chasms held together by grand laws

That we pretend to grasp.  The smidgin wing

Of tiny fly explains you, too, because

The one is all, as prophets amplify.

  Or not.  There is no meaning anywhere

    In anything—and thus the mystic prayer.

* The poet pronounces this as a three-syllable word.

© Phillip Whidden