This might be the end of the world, or the beginning of a new one. The field was cleared in six days, and on the seventh we rested. We felt like gods – no – we were gods. We were God and the devil, creation and destruction. It was the end of the last age and the beginning of a new one, marked not by the thawing of the ice or the howl of wind from the east, but by our own sweat-drenched, bloodied hands. The world would not be the same. It was our world now, our land, our labor, our children running not through trees but fields bowed low with grain. Or so was our hope. We were young then, and the world seemed young with us.
A Questioning Time
When dawn comes late to light the southeast sky,
New thoughts are nursed to life in hours of dark,
And one can hear the voice that night supplies,
And minds can fill with dreams and thoughts that spark.
When warmth is limping, mauled and thrashed by snow,
The crash of water in the river stills,
The shallows freeze, beneath flows deep and slow,
And so the mind in winter forms its will.
When night falls swiftly black over the sun,
And blood makes steady rise from heart to mind,
New gears begin to thaw and turn as one,
To questions answered best while eyes are blind.
Yet there are questions winter cannot solve:
What world will we grow old in, if at all?
A note is tossing in the air that I
Cannot discern from wind or speech or song.
A heart is beating slowly underfoot,
unworried of the season, age, or time.
Perhaps but once a life a man may find
his stride fall into time with his own heart
and feel the press of life beneath his feet
as man and land and step fall into line.
A Questioning Time
When dawn comes late to light the southeast sky,
New thoughts are nursed to life in hours of dark,
And one can hear the voice that night supplies,
And minds can fill with dreams and thoughts that spark.
When warmth is limping, mauled and thrashed by snow,
The crash of water in the river stills,
The shallows freeze, beneath flows deep and slow,
And so the mind in winter forms its will.
When night falls swiftly black over the sun,
And blood makes steady rise from heart to mind,
New gears begin to thaw and turn as one,
To questions answered best while eyes are blind.
Yet there are questions winter cannot solve:
What world will we grow old in, if at all?
A note is tossing in the air that I
Cannot discern from wind or speech or song.
A heart is beating slowly underfoot,
unworried of the season, age, or time.
Perhaps but once a life a man may find
his stride fall into time with his own heart
and feel the press of life beneath his feet
as man and land and step fall into line.