Everyone seemed to be in a hurry,
To get to the end of life,
To see what lay there.
It was a huge current-
They all knew what lay ahead,
So they said.
Boulders to surpass,
Falls that would have you break your bones!
And helplessly so.
Sun that would scorch so much!
That you would trickle into nothingness,
And you'd wonder if you'd ever make it to the end..
There were times, when the huge current did become a trickle,
And many chose then, to perish with the Sun..
It was better than enduring the pain, so they said~
These were the kinds of stories they shared,
These were the kinds of stories they warned us about,
And everyone around me, seemed to be okay with all that they said.
With a kind of an arrogance veiling our fright,
We just went about getting beaten,
Just like they said.
There were some, who got so wild at the seeming unfairness,
That they thrashed about wildly,
Causing a huge disturbance to those of us around-
Those of us, who still had the wits to carry on,
Found ourselves asking them to move to the side,
Because they broke our flow, like they'd said some would.
And then there were those, who drifted apart and away~
The lost ones, so they were called amongst us, who stayed the course.
They will not survive, they won't make it, so they'd said again.
One of them was my friend,
I always longed to know where they went,
For we never saw them again.
I feared for their safety,
And prayed long and hard for their well being,
While I stayed on in the huge current lest I be drifted away into nothingness too.
Years and years of falls and hits,
And years and years of fleeting moments of ephemeral joy,
I finally saw it coming.
The huge expanse, that it all led to..
THIS is the end?
So they exclaimed!
At that point, many wished to go back,
But there was no turning back now,
We were nearing the end.
There was no way to tell all of those behind us,
Where it was that we stood,
It was terrifying!
We were so insignificant,
In sight of the mighty expanse that stood before us,
That we all became quiet for a while just praying for grace~
And then, a most curious thing happened-
The expanse lit up radiantly as if in answer to our prayers!
And received us as lovingly as a mother would a child she hadn't seen in years~
I cannot explain what happened after that,
Because it was no longer we or them,
Astonishingly I felt, it was all me~
Perhaps it was a trick that the expanse played,
For I could no longer differentiate-
One thing from another.
Everywhere around us,
Lay a most blissful kind of peace,
At last we were at rest.
As the wondrous shock of that engulfing moment passed,
I began to see again,
The many parts of us-
Thanks be to grace, I saw among us,
Even those who had drifted apart and away!
The ones that won't make it, like they'd said.
They, particularly, seemed to be carrying a twinkle-
A twinkle I hadn't seen among us,
Those of us, who were carried in the huge current.
We asked each other what had happened to those who perished with the sun,
And a wise soothing sound would tell us-
They would rejoin the big current after having been held by the skies awhile~
We felt glad to know,
That all of us were accounted for,
And understanding pervaded us all~
A sense of sprightly joy then started bubbling within me as I floated about,
While the expanse ever remained a serene ocean of loving calm and rest,
This wasn't the end.
