That which can imagine things
is ever so much less
than that which evolved to allow it
to imagine things.
Consider the 3.5 billion years of evolution
that had to create all the machinery and complexity
which allows you to have even the smallest
glimmer of self-awareness that you exist.
gallagher
25Jul23
Stockholm
Can we ever really know what others feel?
The long years of our lives stretch behind us;
all those moments that were so real.
And you lived each one; impaled
on those very moments and feelings.
All gone now.
And all, only yours now, in vague memories.
So, we come to death after hoping all of our lives
to have arrived and to have been delivered
from the transient – and yet, it is all transient.
All that we held dear was, and is, just ours alone.
A changing movie that we just had bit parts in
as it progressed and evolved.
All this is so much easier to see, now, here at the end
than it was at the beginning
when we thought that delivery
from the transient was still possible.
At best, we can love and share
part of our individual journeys;
seeing each other and touching each other
in those frames of our movies that we share.
For now, while the sweeping sands of time and change
collect around our shuffling feet
and the weathered lines gather on our faces,
we can only wait for each other to disappear.
When I hug the one I love, I am gathering us into this moment,
into the sweet timeless feeling space of ‘now’ to forget
that the world doesn’t love the transient
as much as we love the world.
Gallagher
25May24
Toronto
We are creatures
spawned from change;
in the never ending churn
of an existence in motion.
Temporary, transient
and small,
like pebbles of awareness.
Existent ,for but moments,
in the endless deluge.
We catch our breath…
and then we are gone.
The transient
is all we have
in this moving
eternity.
A momentary awareness
is all we are
in the great flow
of unknowing.
We try
to freeze and name
its passing
with our words.
But those are only
arbitrary gestures.
Irrelevant,
before they are swept away
in the endless changing.
Sometimes,
if we are very quiet,
we can sense
the infinite
unity of it…
before
another thought
arises in us
and we are lost again
in the small pebble’s
forlorn dream
of understanding.
Gallagher
23 July 24
Christchurch