Entity

Grady McMurtry

Tenuous it wells and spreads far out across the sleeted sky,

A shapeless bulk against the suns which, immersed, within it lie

And glow a dull red angry hue, convulsed they wave with life aware

Arched tendrils of the galaxies; sentient, they curl and stare

Into the closely crowding gloom, taut filaments of pearl strung light

Stand stiff from where a bursting sun collapsed beneath the crushing might

Of this vast sprawling entity, spawn of the darkness, spherical

Or cubic relativity, a mindless thought, a miracle.

Into a finite consciousness there threads a thought of Being,

Intelligence is wrought to life within a mammal; seeing

With clumsy organs blind to all but one prismatic cord

Yet in that spectrum reveling to rob it of its hoard

Of orange, yellow, green, and gold, amethystine and blue,

Each sharp distinction revealed by some subtle shade or hue

In the glory of the morning, at the brazen gong of noon

Or the swirling dusk of evening lapping at a sated moon.

Some wonder why it clings to earth, to live and live again

To taste with the ephemeral their joy and hate and pain;

Why one who could destroy or build a universe should live

Within the confines of a man, what has a man to give?

That man has sight and taste and smell and touch to guide him by

And he can hear a thousand sounds some beautiful, some wry.

For though his senses may be fogged and though his mind be dim

Each process of perception forms a thought distinct, to him.

To one that broods within the void and is to all receptive;

A planet with encrusted life is but a pawn; perceptive,

Attuned to an infinity of graded radiation

Produces an intelligence that knows but one sensation

A color, it would be white to us, an unbearable glare

It has no shield, there is no help, it can only cringe and stare

Into the fire; or thrust itself into the mind of you or I

Escaping from the bitter cold, the blinding snow fields of the sky.

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