Alive and well one more morning
Ready for a new day's learning
Poetry flows out of me like sneezes the sick
I always want to figure out
What makes life tick
Walking, busing, cycling, driving
Trying to pass surviving and reach thriving
Cold, warm and hot depends on the time of year
Whether you're drinking hot chocolate or cold beer
Cops pulled an old van over at 8:44 am
Flashing lights on a busy road like a sparkling gem
Sky overcast, ominous like late-term pregnancy
Who knows what a day'll bring with its mix of
Reality and fantasy
The ever-burning question inside my skull
"Do creeks speak?" Yes, so trivial and dull
But really, if the gods are silent as humans shout
Wouldn't it be nice if nature had a mouth?
The skies, the trees, the plains, the seas
The leaves, the bees, the squirrels, the geese
Speaking, having their say
Amidst the anthropo-cacophony
Filling our airspace
What do our non-human neighbours wish to convey?
Can Zen masters ascertain their messages?
How about prayer warriors or shamans, Pharisees or Sadducees?
Perhaps our ears were designed to be tuned to other frequencies
Nature not on our broadband, hidden away in secrecy
If that's the case, it is one big tragedy
To live on planet earth with reduced capacity
Physically and mentally incapacitated
Missing out on the world's voices
Both mournful and elated
This time of year the creek continues its bubbling gurgle
As always but with one added wisdom pearl
We can smell spawning salmon dying as they reproduce
We can still learn a thing or two if we let our senses loose
We may have been born connected
But along the way we collectively defected
Separated from the reality flowing from the universe
Instead choosing silos that became our curse
Indeed, what makes this macrocosm tick and move?
Is it innocence with nothing to prove?
Or is it pulsating life, so simple yet so complex we fail to grasp?
Oh, how I long to comprehend just 1% before my final lap!
~ Gunnar Våken
