Photograph by Jeff Howard
Steady State
Because being here is contingent
on not having been here,
a choice, an inflection point:
Each thing takes us to the last,
each imperfect thing
resonating and
ringing into the infinite
beneath a patchy sky,
a neglected cavern ceiling,
a welcoming bower
of imperfect limbs –
imperfect things
indistinguishable
from that perfect thing.
So love each thing.
And what choice
is there? you may ask.
To deny this heedless beauty,
regard it with skepticism and
squinting into the gloom,
forgetting that
being here is contingent
on living among
vetches and sea lions
and rockfall canyons whose
trickles of liquid teem
with waterbugs
and paramecia that,
like us, with us,
found their way here
from the vacuum –
yet sensing
that this might just
possibly be a good thing,
a thing to carry on,
this living among
and within.
So pausing, just now, to
mull this proposition,
to let it linger on the tongue:
a thing to carry on,
this living among
and within.
Just for a moment —
a breath,
then another.
A breath,
a breath,
and the space
between.
Jeff Howard lives in the Columbia River valley by way of the Allegheny River valley, the Connecticut River valley, and valleys beyond. His work, which reflects a Buddhist perspective on the continuum of consciousness in an era of ecological-tailspin-amid-ecological-belonging, is forthcoming in The Fourth River and has appeared in The Ecological Citizen, Consilience, The Thinking Republic, and Green Ink.
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