Here,
amid the weeds
of these centuries,
I rise.
Seeking light and warmth
from the soils and seas
of yet another world.
The long rise;
the single cell, the multiple.
We spawn;
fleet of form and bright of eye.
We gather and rise
in complexity and imagination
beneath another wheeling sun, above,
and the shifting plates, below.
Again and again,
we come to self-consciousness.
Spewing poetry and conquest,
cities and literature.
Proud and driven,
we sing the animal’s song …
but in a higher key;
as we procreate, build and consume.
And it is always the same rise …
and always the same fall,
just … beneath a different star.
We are technological children,
impulsive and uncontrolled,
pressed onward by those same
biological imperatives
that fueled our original rise
from the mud.
Those same imperatives,
now freed by our intelligence.
Those same imperatives,
now pushing us from behind,
motivating us,
while we stare into the mirror
of our imagined futures
and think ourselves Gods.
And all this
while we are sleepwalking
into our demise …
once again.
We think we are aware
and we imagine
that we see the game entire.
But while we are looking for enemies
outside the gate,
they are no further
than our next desire, within.
We, driven on
by our own biological imperatives,
will plunge again
onto that self-same sword
of our desires and greed,
untamed.
I have been many times before
and I will be again …
rising and falling beneath different stars
with different eyes and chemistry.
But I am the same one.
I have yearned for my freedom before
and I have died by my own hand.
But someplace among the stars,
I will rise once more.
And this time … this time …
I will learn to transcend
the very urges
that doomed me
in my technological
adolescence.
And on that very dirt,
after the long climb yet again,
I will finally find the path
to maturity and intentional balance
with the biosphere that birthed me.
And enter, then, into all of
whatever awaits … such as we.
gallagher
21 June 2008 – Summer Solstice
Monroe, Washington, USA