Witness The Spirit

 

The spirit of Nature is a manifestation of the Universal Essence, immanent in every cell and atom and in the void as a force pregnant with the possibility of forms yet to emerge. It stirs the wind, moves the waves joyously and makes the Yin and Yang, polar opposites perpetually chase one another like the spokes of a wheel. It makes electrons dance around the nuclei of atoms in differing numbers to give so-called inanimate matter its character and qualities, its form and shape, the appearance of solidity. It engages in the divine play to create levels of reality which appear to change as you go from one dimension to another or from the macrocosm to the microcosm or yet again from one pair of human eyes to another pair of canine eyes or from that to the eight eyes of the spider or the complex eyes of a bee. Reality changes depending on which level you are or through which visual lens it is being perceived and to which type of brain those visual signals are transmitted.

The Spirit causes everything to move in circles from the seasons, to day and night as the earth spins on its axis, the solar system as it swings around the sun, the cells in our body as they rush through our circulatory system, the electrons around the neutrons, the waters raining down from the clouds on mountain tops flowing down rivers to the sea, to rise again as vapour and become clouds – all Nature’s circular systems. Even the past into the present and future and dissolution and back to creation are kind of circular.  All cultures celebrate this ephemeral force with the rites of spring when it is at its most creative. The big bang is after all its cosmic spring, the rites of creation.

At the Quantum level it gets even more mysterious and mischievous, defying definitions and turning matter back to the energy from which it emerged and making a mockery of separate identities and egos, showing that our  inherent nature is  an energy field connecting each to the other and making us one. We are all that force, each one of us is also the whole, like the drop is the ocean, the trees are the forest. We are Nature, you are the whole of Nature, I am Nature.

To celebrate, honour and pay homage to Nature I had penned a poem many years ago which I wish to share with you, who too are Nature. I begin the poem with a sense of my unique individuality like no other ( no one can match my finger prints can they?) but close with the understanding that I am in fact just a part of a whole.

 

                                 W I T N E S S

 

What I write

And it doesn’t matter if someone

Reads it or not,

I do because

I am a witness

Made up of the same substance that I watch

So carefully

And that is a circumstance

 So unique

Like the dinosaur’s

Incidental footprints in the rocks

Or the geological secrets locked

In involuntary asteroids

Floating free for eternity.

 

For instance

Can you imagine

How light

Metamorphosed into an eye,

The decibel of sound

Sought to be heard

And that arch of the ear appeared

In flesh,

Functional like the horn

Of a gramophone?

 

And the rhythms of the sea

became the rhythms of the mind

Or was it the moon pulling the tides

Or the spinning earth

Or the sun, its shadows

Day and night

That built our fluid natures

And helped us polarize

into opposites?

 

The other day

I was pursued

By a black polyethylene bag

Full of wind

Racing like a cat so adroit

That I had to step aside

To let it pass.

The elements had caught it up

Playfully to give it life

As is their wont,

So with a little more effort

And time

One is not surprised

What they have done.

]

Sound has a way

Not only of being heard

But of being spoken out,

Sound has found a way

Of shaping a mouth;

Roar, chirp, speech

The resonance of each

Given its signature voice.

 

This great green oceanic lung,

Distillate of the elements

In perpetual flux,

Still and calm contained

Or lashing the shores,

Heaving into mountains

Or collapsing to its core,

Inhales, exhales,

Whales in its vitals

Shoals near its shores,

Crustaceans everywhere,

Clouds racing above,

Whirlpools and spirals

Spawning eagles and gulls.]

 

Winds into wings,

Waves into fins,

Elements furiously stirring,

Elements in focus

Into minds

In us.

As a witness

I leave my fingerprints

Of  the same elements

That moulded me

From the dust.