Quiescence

In the tranquil fifth hour of anti-meridiem
I arose to a most unusual freshness,
ambrosial, as if for these few moments alone,
spring resolved to make felt its merry blossom.

Family — yet asleep, discerning which, the desire
to cherish the possibility of solitude pervaded me;
glissading, as silent as a tiger on the prowl,
I made my way out of the house.

That ubiquitous fragrance, elsewise a delightsome
virtue of a sylvan meadow, illumined by the sprightly sun,
now graced the caliginous dawn, drifting, aided by
the distinct currents of the crisp zephyr, soothing the mind.

The salutary wafts, in their helpless travel to within me
enkindled the inevitable thoughts, pertinent
to the sheer evanescence of it all, of our beinghood;
why cannot we just get along, in perfect harmony?

How onerous could it be, the esteem
for the bounties that Nature has bestowed
for our utility, for our succour, for our anabasis
and hardly for puerile fisticuffs, for contumelies?

But despite that odoriferous dawn
which compelled the genesis of that desire
to dwell in harmony, to abjure it all,
there arose the voice of reason, of prudence.

Conflict and Cooperation, it apprised, are
but woven as adjuvant threads
into the fabric of existence; you as Man,
sapient though you are, cannot transcend its shroud.

Civilization, it assured, is not the nemesis
of Nature, but a fruit of Man’s ingenuity which
is natural to him, and thus a gift of Nature Herself;
She cannot by Man be destroyed, but merely remade.

Perdition, it informed, is but a prelude to a process
of new creation, which is ephemeral, as were
its antecessors, and must therefore also perish
in the sempiternal cycle of change.

Such truths dawned, and a poignant thought struck
Society constitutes no exception,
cohesion to collapse and cohesion again; inevitable
in the sempiternal cycle of change.

Despair not, the encephalon said;
the societal rift shall pave the way to unity
as is its natural providence, but maybe not
in your span of life — lugubrious again.

Return, I reminded myself, to civilization
yet again, for the splendour of Nature yonder
is salubrious, but transiently; she is as much
a foe as civilization is — persevere!

Out of the capaciousness, nourished by the
ambrosial zephyr, into the secure embrace
of home, glissading past asleep family
for the dawn of another saturnine day.

Until the dozy embrace of crepuscular quiescence.