The Magic Ring

The Magic Ring

One autumn morning in the early dawn
I pushed off from the shore into a fog
So dense it seemed that all the compasses
Of earth were gone. No bird called from the shore
And no sun shone, and as I drifted there
I dreamed, and time began to slow — then stopped —
Or so it seemed – and I was drifting
In the void when time had not begun,
When all the world’s myriads were one,
And nothing was before.

And there we drifted, time and I,
As derelicts in trackless space,
And would have drifted endlessly
But for the water’s saving grace,

For from the tip of a suspended oar
A droplet fell and formed a circle there,
And looking at the widening magic ring
Time saw its polar star once more,
Time’s arrow flew ahead again,
A breeze disturbed the morning air.
A crow called out and wakened me.
A heron moved along the shore.