The Pattern
(A Step Along the Way to my ‘Final Report’)
Man’s linear patterns traverse the earth and air and sea,
Dominating, we feel, with both pride and regret,
The teeming chaos of Nature’s other messengers.
Quiet reflection reveals that in a sometime Earth moment,
The creeks, the mud, the grasses,
The spider and deer and coyote,
Will overtake our man-patterns,
As we relentlessly focus on the ever smaller and more numerous things
We think we can control for our seeming advantage.
As reason first graced then afflicted man,
He began to shape the vortex he will be sucked into:
A whirlwind of expanding data and diminishing knowledge
Of The Whole
That grows ever larger and more detailed in man’s eyes.
Simplify, accept, flow gently or tumultuously,
And rejoin Chaos with Nature’s other lives
To find The Pattern that underlies all,
And which cannot be named.
—
Written 3 Jan 2002 , while sitting on a rock near Stiles Ranch Trail, Santa Teresa Hills, San Jose