Logos Longa Vita Brevis
In memory of David K. Leff
With journal and pen, I enter into this wilderness cathedral
greeted by a congregation of buzzing bees gathering nectar among the royal purple heliotropes, the radiant-red lantana, and the white-robed cosmos. Slightly swaying in the wind, the flowers reach for the vaulted heavens in supplication while seemingly lost in meditation to a choir of birds singing a hymn in harmonic counterpoint, intermingling words of praise and solemn remembrance.
And as the golden light spills through the empty spaces of trees like a natural window of stained glass and onto my lap, I once again set my pen to paper.
The world is composed of invisible words.
More like scribe taking dictation than composer, I listen intently to the hum of the universe. Suddenly as if by magic, nature reveals a tapestry of words, emanating from the hum of bees found deep within the flower’s ornate petals; from the syllables sung from the goldfinch and song sparrow; and, from the river’s gentle whisper offering sweet words of consolation, emitting a sympathetic language from a thousand lamps of reflecting light.
I begin to drown in words.
Words breathe life into existence and make it dance, allowing me to transcribe a few of its musical notes, conspiring to form symbols with meter, sentences with rhyme, stanzas with meaning.
But I cannot fully comprehend this Rosetta Stone of Life. I cannot channel all of its vocabulary onto my thin slice of bark.
And so, after contemplating my blank paper during this golden hour, I put pen to poet’s paper and leave my mark:
But sometimes the stories are hard to hear
these days, archived within its rings so deep
but I think I can decipher the overall meaning —
what you sow, is what you reap.
I meditate on this moment, slowly breathing in a portion of nature’s text, satisfied in the few verses that I have consumed and expelled within my book of leaves.
And perhaps some of my words will live on. For they are not original, nor mine to keep.
Rather, they are to be passed on. For words are eternal, and life is brief.
