The Final Outpost

To hear the author reciting her poem, accompanied by Wayne Thiel on guitar, click here (visual effects also by Wayne)

Have I arrived, arrived again
at sojourn’s final outpost
in pastures verdant, fruitful and forlorn?
Am I alone on spacious forest footpaths
that are embedded ever in my mind?

Where are my fellow travelers?
Whence do my echoes bounce
when they but hit against a rock
and burst in emptiness of sound?

What am I then?
Am I the rock, the echo and the footpath?
Amid all others and all otherness
am I the only “I” there is?
And is that otherness the only “I” I know?

And NOW where has all gone
that I am all that’s left?

Oh, there are marvels of imaginings to furnish me
with my yet greatest enduring creativity.

I stand within an ancient brand-new NOW.
And in that NOW I know I am a thousand particles
and cells, and selves,
yet stand unbroken and apart.
Though I am also the smallest part of All That Is
I realize that I’m not less
but more
than I ever thought
I was.