Our passage through time's feasting halls
is swift and short,
slow and long,
a sprinting, crawling,
leisurely race
towards and away from
eternities we know nothing of
yet speculate endlessly over,
like debaters and disputants
far more knowledgable
than we really are;
and all the while
forgetting, ignoring, uncaring of
why we're in the race to begin with,
remembering even less -
as though we'd never learnt,
nor even been curious about -
why we were moving from
shadow to shadow
and ray to ray
to begin with.

How curious!
How amazing!

That we could be so vital,
have so much agency and purpose,
resolve and their milliard impulses,
the means to be all that we are
and could yet become
without once realising it,
without understanding our
oneness in many, our
part in the whole of who we are,
without wishing to flesh out
the map of our journey
and share our discoveries
with those around us,
our fellow actors and runners
and thinkers and artists and makers,
without ever once stopping to appreciate
the awesome richness
of our surroundings
and the connections we could make
and the changes we could effect
and the sheer, illimitable
beauty of it all!

Because life is short
in the midst of all that eternity,
and long in the making,
and so full of promise.

Because it's ours;
it's who we are.

Because it is us,
and what we are is divine.