Standing at the Edge

Standing at the edge,
Time's chasm opens deep;
Stars filter down,
Dust motes infinite air to keep.

Age upon age,
My soul has wandered,
Stopping here and there
Till time is squandered.

Brief moments I stare
Out eyes of blue;
See in an infant's face
A mother's hue,

Or in a stranger's gait
A father I've long forgot,
And simple bliss
Long lost from thought.

Many names
And many eyes
Have been mine,
But each one dies.

And now time has turned
Toward the start
Where home has been
So long apart.

How long have our souls slumbered, being dragged from one incarnation to the next, never seeing clearly the tapestry of life and time?

I have seen the Roman campaigns of glory, proudly carrying the standard of my Centurion. I have wept at the loss of old Atlantis, afraid that time would not save us from the jaws of starvation, but we few survived, nonetheless.

I grow weary of the plodding monotony amidst the false distractions of mortal pleasures. The story is nearly always the same: birth, suckling, yearning, youthful arrogance, mature uncertainty, feeble regret and death.

These bones are but a borrowed cage. They house a bird which longs to take flight and has done so, briefly, on occasion. But clouds of sleep return and the bird clings to the cage for safety and certainty.

How long has it been since we turned our backs on the light of true vision? How long have we lived in the cold, hard darkness of physicality, unable to see without these mortal instrumentalities?

We are each very ancient beings borrowing temporary vessels. These Homo sapiens bodies clothe us for awhile and must be shed for a new set until one day we find a way to wake up. But I'm afraid that the millennia have turned and time has run its course. The end is upon us. The signs have started. And though I feel fear at the great change that is to come, a part of me rejoices that the angels have started to march.