Time

Verses in Season began not as a blog, but as the title for a collection of poetry I wrote. Last fall I took a poetry course and our first assignment was to write in the style of Kahlil Gibran's classic, 'The Prophet.' I know his work well and I knew it would be a challenge. I wasn't anywhere near comfortable trying to emulate his style. His work is far too superb for us amateurs to compare with! Nonetheless, I was excited and I gave it my best shot.

*****

 

Time is the primordial promise.

Universal oath.

Sun and moon in cosmic union,
painting the sky in definitive tones: fever red and ocean blue; its fragrance is the air.

 

Time passes on the wings of our days and the breaths of our nights.
Pages turned in ancient story,
a map etched in our earthly bodies,
a traveler shrouded in season and skin.

 

Time is the language of the earth.
The morning songbird and nighttime orchestra
summon us to attend time's sacred show.

It is the infant's cry, released from the womb and delivered into the hands of fate—

a journey full of quiet promise, though it beckons with a deafening call 

and its voice is never far from our dreams.

 

Time is the impermanent stone; a treasure to hold,
though it escapes through our memory, like sand through curled palm.

Time rushes like a wave to the shore,

bathing us in ghostly tide and restless storm.
As wind and rain move through ancestral bones,
ashes and mist are left in its wake.

 

For time is the breath of life,
the stillness of death,
and the memory of love.

 

And just as time wears the cloak of today,

By: Lindsay Ronald