I saw a mother holding a young girl
of perhaps a year and a half.
And as I looked,
I found that I could feel
what the little girl was feeling
as she hugged her mother.
The enclosing warmth,
the certain sense of security
and the loving protection
against all
the new and confusing mysteries
of the world around her.
It was, for me, and the small girl,
…everything…
for those few moments it lasted.
An endless safe place to be; for that time.
And then she chose to go down
onto the floor again
to walk around
and see what was there.
Her mother stood up behind and followed.
Just a woman with a child.
And yet so much had passed
and touched me
in just those few moments
gallagher
christchurch
21Jan25
Archive for the ‘Substack’ Category
2025-01-21 – I saw
Saturday, February 15th, 20252001-12-23 – Swept
Sunday, August 10th, 2025All of us so swept away
with the minutia.
Dealing with everything
in our close and immediate spheres.
We are a roiling tumult
of living and acting out.
In our small and personal dreams
scarcely one of us
in 1000, or 10,000, stops
and reflects on where we’ve been
and where we’re going.
But, no matter.
Destines do not require
the destined to be cognizant.
The stage moves
beneath our feet so slowly
that we don’t see
the scenery changing.
We don’t notice the gathering
of the historical dialect.
We imagine we see progress
in the increasingly unstable facades
around us.
And we think we see
promise in our increasing ability
to subvert the natural order.
We mostly act to change things
with little understanding or care
for the consequences, if they but lie
just an inch or two
beyond our immediate concern
or the length of our attention span.
How many times must complexity
and evolution yield up
self-awareness again and again
before it is complete?
Each half formed attempt arises
deeply unaware of its limits
on yet another planet.
Staggering onto the stage
on some new biological Eden
with mirror and ego in hand
and the power to cause havoc
in a new world.
gallagher
Monroe
23Dec2001
2025-12-20 – A fool’s errand
Thursday, December 25th, 2025Before words, simple ‘is-ness’ was all.
Then we came with our words and,
seeing only from within them,
we tried to ‘explain’ things.
It is such a fool’s errand.
Know that the ‘is-ness’
is the truth
and that the words are the illusion,
and things get much simpler.
gallagher
20Dec25
– in response to a post by Robert Saltzman