A scent on the air
Or a trick of the light
And I recall a fragment of a dream
A morsel of memory
And wonder
How in my brain
These pathways connect
Accessed so long ago
Reawakened now
To these forgotten instances of living
Becoming aware of how
The sheer amount of information
Funneled into our conscious narrative
Becomes flavored and tainted
By things we can’t even fully grasp
Associations
Rewards
Punishments
Interlocked to how I feel about this
Moment
And then
How much do I miss?
What passes me by?
Lifetimes of thoughts
Awareness
Too much for one person
One conscious mind
Cannot contain the multitudes of
Joys
Hopes
Despairs
Even of the life thread
Of one individual
Every moment
Is everything
All possibilities contained
In the barrage of sensations
We are subjected to each moment
There is beauty, comedy, and tragedy
In every bit of every thought and every event
It is the soul that chooses which we experience
What becomes identity
So that a crippling loss
Can be a new beginning
So that an amazing feat
Can pale in the face of personal failures
So that we can be heroes or villains
Saints or scum
But always
It is just a matter of how the lens is focused
And too often we focus on details
Not that the details aren’t important
But that alone they are no testament to the larger picture
Nor to each other and their interconnectedness
The true grandeur
The real splendor of the picture
Is to know all the details intimately
And then to step back and let them wash over you as a whole
To understand how the ugly
Make the gorgeous that much more spectacular
To see how triumph can only be accomplished
By overcoming obstacles
To see that hope has no place
In a world where there is nothing to fear
Sacrifice for salvation
There is a little pleasure in every pain
If we can keep the whole perspective
Then it makes our trials bearable
Because we see that they are the work
That paves the way upward
The very substance
That makes ecstasy possible
The price
Of admission to paradise
I wrote this poem a few years ago. I think the initial inspiration came from watching snow being blown through trees on a sunny day. It’s one of my favorite I’ve ever written.