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26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth)'s avatar

My first notion of infinity came in math class, the first time I heard about the number line going on forever in each direction. Your swan is a much lovelier image than that.

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Weston Parker's avatar

I remember that number line. In our class the line had arrows at each end. I was 7 or 8 when I got my glimpse of eternity. I was trying to get my donkey to back up to our stone wall so I could climb over and get the almonds from the tree on the other side. Pushing against my donkey, Dimitri, I was looking through his mane past our gray wall past the deep green cypress trees in front of the brown/tan almond tree and then, all of a sudden, beyond that, the white clouds and the deep blue sky of Greece. At that moment I knew that the blue never ended and also, at that exact same moment I became certain of my own mortality/death. Quite an extraordinary moment that I remember perfectly 58 years later and it has been a source of great comfort ever since. Beyond strange.

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Patris's avatar

A pure moment of epiphany.

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Weston Parker's avatar

It was. There was some immediate editing and some more over the years but it was an honor to be around, to be in the room when it happened. I just finished one this morning after looking at some photos my wife put up on Facebook about a green gate in Aix-en-Provence.

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Stanley Wotring's avatar

A single point is infinity in itself.

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Weston Parker's avatar

yeah buddy. or how about old William Blake's take on it-

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour"

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Jed Moffitt's avatar

This is fantastic

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Weston Parker's avatar

Thank you. We are alike in our appreciation of big distances/time.

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Malcolm J McKinney's avatar

Yes! Infinity is not the artist's accurate representation of trees growing smaller and closer as distance increases. It is exactly opposite.

From this moment in time

Infinity is a great cone

Pointed at our hearts.

But not much is visible

As if cloud hidden.

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Weston Parker's avatar

That is an interesting way to look at it.

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Jodie Meyn's avatar

Here's to ripples! We really are on the same page!! I love the (to me) maternal or maybe authorial care that the swan has for every molecule.

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Weston Parker's avatar

It was maternal, my mother used to say things like that about us, that she cared for us even if we were small and filthy, which we all were.

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Jodie Meyn's avatar

Ha!

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Patris's avatar

I don’t think I can express how powerful I think this is. You capture both the sheer immensity and the significance and insignificance of our awkward attempts of quantifying time.

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Weston Parker's avatar

I wish I knew what to say in response except that some poems arrive like a shit load of snow sliding off a metal roof (all of which we have here). When I reread this thing I am quite taken aback by it and wonder where it came from. I sometimes feel the imposter's syndrome when all I am doing is recording.

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Patris's avatar

Plugged into the universe? Perhaps - and as a poet on a higher frequency than most of us, then. Wherever it’s from (I’m pretty sure it’s your soul) it’s an incredible piece.

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