Tick

Just a second,
Minute by minute;
Life happens in its own time.
I’ll do it later,
Second by second;
Suspense swells and deflates.
As soon as I’m done,
Hour by Hour;
Substance crumbles to dust.
In a moment,
Day in and day out;
Infinity expands… and I wait.
The Thief of Time is Time

Ronda R. Scott-Marak
© 18 March 2013 

Autumnal Equinox

Is the Day half Light or is it Night that’s half Dark?
In whose realm do we find the grey?
Divided by time and spectrum, cockcrow and nightingale’s song;
with fall comes the ebbing of Radiance and the rising of Shadow.
The wind changing from balmy breezes to polar gusts tell the future of the leaves.
The Brilliance of sunlit leaves fade and become the Gloom of nature’s yearly sleep;
leaving empty nests and branches in the muted autumn days.
Overnight the temperatures sudden drop from summer heat to autumn crisp presages winter ice.
Does the Day recede like falling tides,
or does the Night encroach like the rising tides?

Ronda R. Scott-Marak
© 22 September 2016

Stardust and Seas

with thanks to Liz Keifer for the thought.

We are formed of particles, of stars long forgotten.

We are made of clay and dust;
atoms formed of small things that rode the light of the Firmament.

We descend from fossils of lives beyond memory and Time;
birthed here, of the Big Bang, we crawled out of the ashes of Earth,
tempered by Air and Fire, the vast expanse of Waters.

We are flesh and fluids, both soft and hard, animal and mineral;
and we are made of oceans as our tears, and the sweat of our brows are salt.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak
©11 November 2019

Breathe of the Divine

Not animal, vegetable, or mineral; neither liquid nor solid, you can’t touch it,
but it can push you forward or back.

Air in motion, spinning, leaping, shoving, lifting, agitating;
when still it seems non-existent, it just is.

It has no hands or mouth, yet it can tear, bite, pummel or caress.
It can burn or chill; lightly touching with warmth or a cooling sensation

It lifts, pulls, rustles, and blows;
invisible, it is always there except when it travels elsewhere,
leaving silence and stillness behind.

The wind is unseen except by its shadow; it carries scents of far away,
of home, of good memories, of freshness and youth, or the stench of illness, battle and. death.

From all the cardinal points, it brings distance closer;
the green growing things of new life in spring,
the odour of summer streets — festival foods and refuse
the brittle and pungent smell of autumn and the frozen, piney rasp of Winter.

Wind is felt, it is heard, it is smelled, it can be tasted,
it can be ridden by insects and birds;
it touches us inside and out, but it is invisible to the human eye, as invisible as the sight of infinity.
It makes us huddle together and step apart.

It is both a blessing and a curse, but it is neither an ill wind nor a tailwind; it is endless and always.

It calms or in its absence becalms; seen by its effects alone.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak
© 11 September 2019

Kol

כל האבות ואמהות

We are attached by threads of history;
sacred covenants and cultural memories

Our connection to a place: out of time, beyond recollection—
keeps us joined even in disagreement.

We are separate and linked, we were there and never there;
born or affirmed, throughout millennia
always bound in both the then and the now.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak
© 3 September 2019