What is a horizon? Silence beyond my sight. Where the unknown, dreams and possibilities, collide, plumes scattering the dawn. Not the crisp images refracted by memories, scents of feelings strong and bold. A horizon, it is nothing more than the *limit of my sight once said. A small death, as with all the ending of light, no spark for cellular eclipses of my body, quantum supernovas as see-able as stars ending at the edge. Is life, like love the endless horizon I explore? Constant within its murky prospects, never breaking free to scan the vistas I live within. I wonder what eagles see or the whale among the water. Even cirrus clouds lounging across winter skies. What is a horizon? An empire on the rise, shimmering political bridesmaids who seek a bride. To step into an idea and consummate the seams. Where formula and timed arrival dominate, so that watchers shade their vision with the silhouettes of statues. And for every leader who conquered the limits of their vision, I watched my possibilities annexed by implacable forms. Imprinting each moment, until fading glory expires, to dirty lace hems of sentimentalism. I wonder then if horizons may linger in my imagination, far from the worldliness of those other things, of realities which must impose their will on mine, obscured beauty and truth, demands veiled in gorgeous sunset coronas. I can no more escape molecular shapes which fill a day than the longing which comes, when the sky meets the world suddenly, urging me to reach beyond them both, with only the indefinable to overcome. That moment of elation, of being, of seeing without sight.
Clare L Rolfe © 2023.
* Prayer used by Fr Bede Jarrett, O.P. Written by William Penn (1644 – 1718)
Inspired by the cirrus clouds of mid-winter