Day 16: Deep Time
a poem a day
Friends,
Today’s prompt is Deep Time.
I’m excited to see how you play with this idea, and how it speaks to stillness and care.
How do we consider deep time?
From the DeepTime Network:
We’re blown away . . .
with the discovery that the universe is a single interconnected entity that has been transforming for 14 billion years, and believe that this perspective changes everything.
We believe . . .
that understanding our deep past is foundational for understanding where we come from, who we are, how the universe works and how to make the best choices for ourselves and the future of Earth.
We can imagine deep time as a spiral of time as well, maybe like a set of stairs we can follow up and down forever, like a labyrinth that doesn’t end. We are journeying through deep time always.
If I could travel the threads of time I’d still look for you there, where the hourglass slims, right there in the middle where the grains of sand gather, right there where you and I are gathered in the sacred space where even time cannot go deep enough to confine our limitless love.
when I say
I’m going to pray,
I mean a prayer so big
it stretches ten thousand years
past the radioactive remnants
of our nuclear mistakes.
I mean a prayer indestructible
like a diamond, tucked into a dark crevice
of basalt in the depths of the river gorge,
where the warm spring forever bubbles up
like a holy wound,
to be found by some curious hands
in a time so far from now
there will only be faint ruins left
of our dream, this longing
to love
beyond ourselves.
I trace a finger down my forearm,
across my palm, and stop
at the last segment of my middle finger.
The universe is so old that this is
the only way I can begin to understand
the length of time that has passed
before humans and all of our strangeness,
how little time it has taken for us
to leave such a big mark on the world,
the arrogance and audacity of it.