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| Serengeti National Park in Tanzania (Public Domain photo, courtesy of pixabay) |
Life is a Seamless Garment
Life is a seamless garment...
To be worn by the Queen of Heaven
when she comes to her oceanic court
under a bright crescent moon.
That sways across the Serengeti Plain
gathering members for a wild nighttime orchestra.
That covers an old man in his feverish delirium
as he is cared for by other men's children.
Life is a seamless garment...
Worn by a joker, tailored by a thief
who can turn the world upside down and inside out
until things level out again.
Run up a rusty flagpole
by myopic adolescents in heady celebration.
Life is a seamless garment...
To be worn by the Cosmic Christ
when the galactic wheel turns around.
Stitched with a genetic code
that was born in a primordial sea.
My grandmother called it a patchwork quilt,
put together by a motley crew.
Diverse and beautiful in its own way,
tiresome but adequate in the end,
But I know life as a seamless garment
Whose surface patterns may change
In the hands of shamans and poets,
alchemists and chefs,
But whose essence is of one piece.
Life is a seamless garment...
That is constantly being gambled for
By soldiers as they do the emperor's bidding.
Unfolding under starry nights
and blown by desert winds,
Whose story cannot be told
in less than three generations.
It has been borrowed, bartered,
stolen and discarded,
But never lost.
Life is a seamless garment...
That covers a banquet table
where even the outcasts are invited,
For it was a joker and a thief who cast them out
in the first place.
That wraps around a mother and her infant child
as they steal a few moments of sleep in the afternoon,
Their breathing in synchrony
with ocean waves and cricket wings.
Life is a seamless garment...
To be enjoyed by lovers in the night.
Adorning mountain tops and river beds
with beauty and mystery.
Knit into the sinews of the tiger
as she hunts along the steamy banks
Of an Asian river valley.
Life is a seamless garment...
With jewels about the collar,
mud at the hem,
Its span is higher than knowledge
and further than remembrance.
Woven into redwood, oak, and pine;
Stitched to dragonfly and hawk,
tubeworm and toad.
It leaves its indelible imprint
upon your skin,
And the cells of your bone
will always remember
Flights above the forest
and migrations in the sea.
Life is a seamless garment...
That stretches from father to son
Even when they claim they do not know each other.
Covering concert hall and circus tent,
tavern and cathedral,
Bringing us together.
hinting at something beyond.
Woven in the mind of God,
Stitched into the dreams of children.
Life is a seamless garment...
That flows from city lights
to candle light
to dying embers of old forgotten fires.
That provides a mantle for saint and guru
and a cloak for the one whose development
has stalled.
Life is a seamless garment
Woven in the mind of God
Stitched into the dreams of children.
~ CK
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