The Uncertainty-Driven Life

Wandering, I stumbled upon my purpose,
Adrift, I made port,
Unbidden, love arrived,
Asleep, I learned my lesson,
In silence, notes danced across my score,
Dreaming, my problems solved themselves.

4th of July

Insistently a dot spirals upwards,
Penetrating light into the dark.
Spent, it booms into a bright bloom of popping florets.
Below, lying on a blanket, a beaming woman looks up,
With a new baby nursing at her breast.

Always and again the cosmos collapses nearly to nothing
Till it bursts out big with shrieking surprise.

Over and ever it pulses
From silence to sound to silence,
From acorns to trees to acorns,
From poems to tomes,
From symphonies to plainsong:
Reduction to essentials,
Expansion to possibilities.

Into what potent singularity
Can these thoughts be shrunk?

JIM BURKLO
Website: JIMBURKLO.COM     Weblog: MUSINGS    Follow me on twitter: @jtburklo
See my GUIDE to my books, “musings”, and other writings
Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California