ONLY OPEN NOW

I wrote this small poem a few months ago. It seems especially apt on this lovely June day. (If it's of interest, please use it as you like.)

ONLY OPEN NOW

Always, always in our day
those who run into Eternity unexpectedly,
bump into it, an accident on their busy road to
Somewhere Else,
always, they see the same revelation.

I hear no accounts of balls of fire swirling over Santa Fe,
No reports of angelic wings whirring over Wichita,
No chariots swingin' low above Charleston.

The favored ones, the veils of the blinding familiar
lifted from their eyes,
the ho-hum of, say, 15,000 yesterdays electrified
into the ecstatic WOW of today, of NOW, eternal NOW--
They speak of the sheen and splendor
of the round friendly acorn,
The impromptu music of the least lark spilling down the tree,
The mystery of slow satin waves glimmering in a fitness pool
full of ancient mariners.

Go where you want,
Stay where you will,
Run as fast as your made-in-China shoes will go;
Sway in your hammock lazy as a coddled cat.
Eternity swirls about you still,
And the glories of the living moment are yours
for the seeing,
Never waiting There,
only offered Here.
Never available Then,
only open Now.

--Elouise Bell, 2006