A silent pounce

Where is that that takes no space?
When is that that takes no time?
Ageless twilight hosts with grace

Infinite night bows with measureless light
Flowing waters cleanse colorless
Refreshing mists sweep soundless

Falcon eyes alert with talons
Cat eyes calm with pounce
Being is intimately ubiquitous

Original pools remain fathomless
All at once, always all at once
Flowing colorless, refreshing soundless

Post Script

The poem begins by asking where and when something can be found if it occupies neither space nor time. It does not answer by moving away from the world. Instead, it enters twilight, night, water, mist, falcon, and cat. The abstract question becomes a sequence of living attentions.

When I first appended a note to the poem, I imagined the past as a grandmother, the future as a bride-to-be, and the present as the attentive host to both. That symbolic structure still sits behind “Ageless twilight hosts with grace.” The present does not erase what has been or seize what is coming. It receives both.

The falcon and cat show two forms of readiness. One is visibly alert, already armed with talons. The other appears calm, but the pounce is gathered within the calm. Stillness is not the absence of action. It is action before its division into before and after.

“All at once, always all at once” now sounds to me like an early approach to a Zen understanding of time. Past, present, and future are not sealed rooms through which a separate self travels. They meet within this activity, while the original pools remain fathomless. The poem does not explain being from a distance. It notices being everywhere, intimately.

Read beside While the world moved, the poem becomes part of a small meditation on stillness and motion. There, a resting figure releases the moving world. Here, the world’s movement is held inside a silent pounce.

Image credit: Wain Cat (realistic), by Louis Wain. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.