Lynn De Jonghe: Three Poems

In this instant 

take off your shoes 
feel the damp sand 
seep between your toes 
step into the canyon stream 
watch iridescent patterns 
of sun and water flow over your feet  
as arrowgrasses stir in the breeze 
thunderclouds rise over distant peaks 
listen to resonant 
trumpets of migrating geese 
smell the tang of freshly 
fallen autumn leaves                     

this moment will never 
be the same again
nor was it ever 

your eye glimpses 
my flash of friendship 
in a second
our bodies’ atoms
change place each nanosecond 
twenty minutes from now
the water on your ankles 
will pour into the 
downstream lake
in mere eons the mountains 
on the horizon 
will disappear 

fourteen billion years ago 
the cosmic egg ruptured open 
lurched the arrow of time forward 
began its elemental outward journey 
four hundred million years later 
collapsing clouds of gas 
produced primordial stars 
in another few billion years 
the cosmos will expand so far
our heavens will be 
unknowable 
to one another    

now is 
was 
forever will be

---

matter becomes aware

-
-
/
-/-
!
-/-/
?
-/-/-/

light/dark
off/on
night/day/night/day
no/yes/no/yes
-/-/-/-/
pulse/rhythm
-/-/-/-/-/

the fireball spews forth
and comes to rest
cools-warms/cools-warms again
in time it ices over
until one day it fractures
and in its cleft
three blades of grass 
emerge

a herd of African giraffes 
denudes a thorn acacia  
then-stops/deterred by poison ethylene 
emitted from the stricken tree
acacia neighbors sense its warning
pump toxins though their leaves 
and drive their predators 
away 

the microscope's
electron eye
permits biologists 
to see at last
the single fetal heart cell
beat
alone
-/-/-/-/-/

---

Leap

Lit only by the flicker of oil lamps
he balances on a willow wood scaffold 
reaches into the depths of the limestone vault 
traces the bulges of its rock with his hand

nods, then outlines a chalk 
seam, creates the contour of 
backbone heavy with muscles 
sketches with his charcoal branch 

the powerful head, the horns thrust forward 
and now the sapient eye until
suddenly released from stone
his mighty bull leaps forth

to race with wild horses 
and ancient aurochs 
through glimmering shadows
run still undaunted
millennia away.

---