Far above us

The sky bursts into colours-

Blue, purple, grey, orange,

With red and all the hues in its range.

 

Miles beneath our feet

Are secrets buried,

Arcane and deep.

Their ampoules once known to everybody.

 

What goes overhead

Suffuses stars and their milky shells.

The departure from earth melancholic but serene,

Leaves behind shimmering trails that speak to those who see.

 

What falls below spirals down and down an abyss

Where fire kindles.

The browns and the oranges lead the one

To flames of eternal damnation.

 

Or perhaps not, perhaps all is a lie.

A construct to define an illusory afterlife.

Perhaps no life exists above and beyond what can be seen,

The constricted world our only scene.

 

But the possibility still remains that all might be true.

The denial of secrets misconstrued.

Who’s to say? Or judge the unseen?

Above the heavens, below the soil and everywhere in between?

 

Existence is a potpourri

Of fragments that surround us beings.

Where oceans are mere shards of glass,

And the earth a scant bundle of grass.

 

A damn puzzle wherein all the pieces are eccentrics;

Eager to seek purpose or at least some kind of logic.

Perhaps only vacuum follows death,

And what’s gone becomes a mildewed mess.

 

P.C. Ahmad Odeh, Unsplash

Shifa