Moulting
Channel: The Quantum Poet
Date: 2021-11-18

Written in July 2021, Moulting is the second poem of the Quanticles of Emergence collection.

Moulting

The young man had got up more than once and I too had rehearsed my farewells.
Yet, together we lingered over our labour for such a parting as ours is inevitably a death,
Where the sharpness of what is lost is so much more keenly felt, at first, than
The softness of what is new, and what is lost will never return quite so,

Even if it is only the familiarity of old habits for which, we are both agreed,
It is time to die. And yet, we knew them, we knew them like our own skin,
And they were our skin, the skin we knew from the inside, which kept us together
And in one piece and seemed to give us our shape, and we knew nothing else.

And though we wanted to shed what it had become, stiff and tight, restricting movement, Suffocating breath, we yet had to mourn the loss of its protection, feel the gratitude,
Have compassion with our suffering of small things such as whether there will be enough
Food on such an abundant planet as Earth, whether we are loved in a world so full of god as ours.

And we reminisced, remembering the moments when he had seen a flicker of eternity
In every passing face and how he had seen in everything what he thought so to lack
And yearned to charm such foreign features into his own perfection.
So, it would speak to him and through sound and presence, closeness, suggest a unity

Of opposites, a wholesome oneness, a glimmer to which he had attached such urgency
Of creative union, believing it could last. Though seldom such unity occurred
Apart from in a giddy fog from which he would awake not seeing that they had their own,
And he had his. His eternity. His union. His wholeness. And that which is eternal kept on being so,

Quite undisturbed and by itself,
Beyond his touch,
Out of sight,
Unheard,
Yet nonetheless perceived.
He was always invited
By way of inkling,
Always welcome.

And the two of us, we sat there just a little longer under canopy of night and encountered things
For which the finest subtlety of word can be no match. We stood face to face with the Ancient of
Days, and heard the Mothers’ tale of death and birth, and death and birth, and rebirth after rebirth,

And we saw the most precious things which happened only quietly and once
And yet touched upon all things that ever had been and ever would,
And we heard within all things the stillness of inside forever sing
And put our fingers to that soft place where the roof of the world
Touches the bottom of all souls and where all that seems so separate
Is still unfathomable, yet already known.

Unfortunately, 

Such experience seeded a thirst for life never yet felt and any care for his temper made way
For it would no longer do, for his temper was as ill-fitting as he had 
become to our shared self.

[...]

See the full text and download the Quanticles of Emergence collection here: https://www.foolsjourney.me/gifts/quanticles-of-emergence-quantum-poetry-vol-i-by-marcus-demetrius-link-the-quantum-poet/