I.
Take me to the high hills
Where purple flowers sway
And bees hum.
Magic bird pounds her song in my ear---
When I look, there is no living creature there!
No bird, no dog, no man.

We are bathed in the river of time past
Flowing into time present:
Time present flowing into time past
in one waterflow.
The beginning ever renewing
in universal flashing.

Each man is an ‘adam’
First in his race.
Each finds the world to his liking;
The plenitude of mystery:
Red, green and yellow canyon walls,
Crystal caves and stones that light up in phosphorescence.
Each one surveys nature and says “It is good.”
This is Now---
Forever now.
One sacred eternal moment.
Now.

But then,
You pick up the radio, turn it on:
Like a twisted phrase, an alien object from space, it says,
“You are falling. Falling fast.”
My feet are running away to the edges of this day
No more to hold center,
Falling down the purple hillside,
The magic bird flies
Across the sky
Through the valley like a Winter stream.

I find distance
And have difficulty remembering my birth and my original home.
[Before or after is the same whether I find myself in the center of the day or at its edges running away
or whether I am with myself
or finding it difficult to recall my face.]
There is no difference between these worlds!
The world is always the same/ always changing.
[What is forever changing is forever the same*.]
*Heraclitus