By: Patricia Saunders

I am falling in emptiness with no handrail to clutch
I am drawing in breath and plunging down passageways
I am dim with night, and full of light.
My soul takes wings
And I am swinging, suspended, soaring in silence
Like a graceful, delicate flower in spring.

I feel the wind as it blows me to the corners of the earth
It blows me in an instant of meaningful time that men look for in wildernesses
And find in their dreams.
I am steering through air with invisible steps
And laughing at people, waving below.
They are blazing with rays, blazing with sunlight
They are melting in poetry, bursting with life.

Do they see the transparency of the weightless clouds?
Do they feel the proximity of a heaven beyond their imagining?
Do they look beyond time, beyond space,
Beyond Heaven, beyond earth?
Do they glimpse the eternal essence of an inner world
That delights in love and inward ecstasy?
Ah time, time, cruel time
You are not lingering for me.
I cannot stop the restless currents which drive me on
Nor can I stop the boundless sky as it becomes the bounded earth.

Time is drawing me away from rapture, away from bliss.
It’s pointing me downwards, ever downwards
Towards the hard ground, the cruel ground that catches my breath
So that only my spirit can rise to touch the sky once more.