The God At Noon

a poem and commentary

The poem:

The tremendous fascinating mystery,
which we can easily see
each time we look out at the world
looks back at us too
and it beholds us
with an infinite number of eyes.

The commentary:

Here is a very ancient vision of divinity. After all, how often has a human caught the glittering eyes of fox or mouse or deer or bear or lion in the teeming forest or the grassy plain and – with a shudder or in sudden awesome ecstasy – they felt everything outside themselves look into their being? How often have the voices of the wind told someone that the spirits of the land are watching? How often has the twinkling light of stars stabbed deep into a human soul? How often has that penetration broken through the calcined layers of a wounded heart so it might love again, or opened darkened places to the light of self-understanding so wisdom could begin?

True, now in the modern world today most times we find ourselves outside that forest and that grassy plain. But find ourselves, we do. So then, where does one meet the infinite here in the artificial places where we live so many days? Often we will cling to one another, finding sanctity behind a lover's smile, in compassion for some wounded one, or in the mysteries of a little child. Or often we will find the mirror of the universe among the things bequeathed by old ancestors, in some carven bit of rock or on a painted wall or in a tale of ancient heroes.

Our masks of god do change; the world around us changes. And yet the vast and holy consciousness behind all masks is there alive as ever, still awaiting our returning glance.