World Small and Vast
Growth melds small and vast into one single world. Your world. Explore!
It is a small world
to a kid that
goes to school
goes to a playground
goes to a swimming class
goes to their best friend’s house
for the long-awaited sleepover,
all safe places
carefully picked by their parents.
It is a vast world
to an explorer
reaching into the unknown
to a poet
lost in so many words
to a man
searching his way
to a woman
searching her way
of living.
Once small,
once vast,
it certainly is
A world.
World
for everyone we love
for everything we hold dear
sadly also hate and fear
for the weak and the brave
for all the dreams we crave
in our lives
in the only world we have,
our world,
small and vast.
The idea to write a poetry piece on the topic small and vast world came to existence when I was taking the following photograph. It was an unusually nice sunny day for November and I needed to wait with my daughter for about an hour at the edge of the city for her sister’s gym lesson to pass. Good that it is in a nice area close to nature — a perfect chance to go for a short walk and take some good photos.
I was aiming for the sunset still above the high grass at the back (taller than me!) when I noticed I had to go around this wooden log to get a better angle. I could have just passed around it or jumped over it, but luckily I noticed there is a small world with its own small sunset on its bark surface.
There I got the spark of inspiration. Small world on the bark. Vast damp grassland world full of ducks and herons only a little further. Which world I was in more at that moment, in the small or in the vast?
My daughter was balance–walking over a wooden log at a nearby playground — is that a small or a vast world? Maybe small to me, but not to her. She is an explorer in a world that is both small and vast. Her world. The only one she has. Let her explore!
