A Child of the World

“Not alone,” he said. “However alone you feel,
the world that made you - of which you are made -
contains you, contained by you, bruisingly real
or a windblown phantom, as philosophy has said:
you're made, like the bird and the beetle it feeds on,
like the hammering thunder or the snapping rain,
like the fog and the rock, or the gemstone and seed,
from dust from collapsing nebulae drained.
The cat is your cousin, and the mouse where it lies
eaten where it lay in the cat’s path.
Your mind and your body and your soul are one
with the mud shining sunlight in your eyes and mine.
You are the world’s child. From this impossible truth,
humbling, even sweet, can shake you no wrath.”
And he vanished in the air
that hangs between cloud and earth and the fire
that burns forever in temporary stars.

© 2006 Christopher Bernard