A Poem By Velma Cook
The busy moments of life cover up the truth of reality as we go unaware through our lives, until death catches up.
Sometimes I just stop and think. Time freezes for a second and I seem to become attuned to a reality that exists far beyond the petty struggles of everyday life. Gazing at the outline of desert hills in the distance or a lone, brightly colored flower, whose skinny, straggly stalk grows out of a bare, dry rock, struggling in its upturned motion toward the light of the sun. At other times, I lie beside the window at night, staring at the sky and the twinkling brightness of stars that shine so many milllions of light years beyond my reach, and yet whose light filters through the heavens to reach me, in my isolation; meeting in the twisted turns of time and destiny. How long did it take the light of that star to reach my eyes? How many people walk beneath its shimmering, timeless beauty, vamping out laughter and loutish cries of vanity, oblivious to the wonders that envelope them in life.
I ponder on the steps I've walked through the days since I was born. The people whose paths crossed mine in friendship and love and others whom I carelessly ignored. The hard lessons of life that shaped my mind and heart and steered my thinking toward the Power that rules this glorious manifestation of Creation and Life. Contorted cries of pride and self conceit seem out of place in a world that slaps down the oppressor; whose deeds follow in a trail of fire and blackness. One day the deeds sent forth will catch up with the tyrant and choke the vanity from the same lips that ordered pain, poverty and death.
Nothing escapes the Creator. No silent word whispered in the dark of night, goes unheard. No evil intent hidden in the recesses of the heart, goes unknown. No stifling corruption or bandits hand, goes unseen. The feeling of freedom that pushes the oppressor to more and more power, is in reality an illusion. For every word and action bears a consequence that bounces like so many ripples on a pond, from a pebble carelessly tossed in sparkling waters. Long after the hand that threw the stone has gone, the ripples continue to form their circles and shapes. Like the words we utter into the wind, which carries the sound of our voices in waves of air that continue to orbit the earth until the day that all will be renewed and then we will hear those same words, see those same actions and the fruit of our toil.
Wasted time and life. How can a day pass where we cease to feel the beauty of life? Seek to understand the truth that emanates from our very existence? How can the Creator be ignored, when all that surrounds us, teems with life and meaning? The sand in our shoes, is carelessly discarded. How many oceans and seas carried each minute grain to its destiny? The very air we breath and food we eat, stand as marks of the Mercy of the Creator, Who supplied us with all our needs. Yet we eat and drink, without gratitude and without feeling for the needy.
All within and around us belongs to the Creator. The wealth, we say we worked for, is a gift, for who gave us the strength and ability to work? Who provided the means of effort? The air? The salts and minerals that constitute our very being? Do we dig the earth in greed, oblivious to the wonder of the hands and minds we bear? Or the wonders that the treasure-filled earth bears for our use?
These precious moments of reflection, cast my mind upon the shore of truth; light; beauty, that stand as proof of life and death and the life that follows it. For as surely as the star casts its light on this dreary earth, all in creation will bear witness to me and my life's doings.
Either speaking for my good or my damnation.
