Grand Solitude
Alone,
Our Sun gently passes over the horizon,
An end that enables a new beginning.
Twilight fades and the stars are born,
A peaceful quiet builds within yourself.
The mind is allowed to roam free.
Dancing across each pinpoint of light,
One travels beyond the late day's limits.
A brief flash, a minuscule movement -
This belies a deafening roar;
Jet engines cut through the blackness above.
Not a sound is heard.
Reaching trillions of times farther,
Yet just next door and identical in appearance,
There shines one of many sisters to our recently departed Sun.
Each so enormous our entire Earth would be as one soldier amongst a giant army,
Each with its most dedicated soldiers marching unwaveringly around in orbit.
Not one is seen.
Alone,
A cold breeze blows across your body,
In stark contrast to the incomprehensible heat of the stars just explored.
Snapped back to Earthly concerns,
Thought now continues inwards.
The mind is allowed to roam free.
What fortunes allowed you to experience the beauty of this night,
What grand act of creation built a mind that can travel to the stars?
Travel backwards from yourself across a vast sea of time,
Roots of a family tree that would surely travel to the core of the Earth.
Billions of years worth of struggling just to survive,
Struggling to reproduce through the generations that ends in -
You!
Alone,
With the airplanes,
With the countless stars,
With your ancestors,
And with whatever else your mind may dream up.
What grand solitude.
-JP
