AND IT BEGAN

And it began, the moment had arrived. No one knew if this was the reckoning, nor who would survive. Shadows of men walking the earth below, nothing left to learn, nothing left to know. We watched as the sky darkened, a gray cloud looming overhead. No angels of heaven harkened the day aloud, “The glooming of her dead was awakening, and it is said we are what is left for the taking.”

The thunder growled low from inside the mount’ and a blaze of lightening reached out and touched its sides. Torn asunder, howled below, we gathered, losing count in the haze, the flashes frightening e’en those who still preached and shouted; “Satan’s clutch, we must hide!”

Those of us who were but apparitions of men, who once lived a glorious life upon this ground, chose to cover ourselves in dust without apprehensions, ingloriously running beyond fear to be found before the mount’ closed forever, through the storm, t’ward some ominous yet hypnotic sound.

Wearing the stone like a veil, the flashes of light filling her veins, she was transforming before our eyes. Swearing my life, alone, to remove this covering of smoke and shale, gashes formed from the lightening, though I ignored the pain and heeded not its warning, when man realizes an overbearing strife, going where no light is shone, choke on the inhale and crashes without fighting – will try again and again, I needed a reborning.

She must be the mother of man, recreated to give us a reason to renew and find love. He, and all the others, damn and expropriated all that lives, a treason that only a few were stripped of when the Earth upon which we walk charred and burned, became our bare existence; most falling to their death sooner than deserved.

We must see each other, if we can, expiated – to live! To endure the seasons we once knew, the heat, the cold, the dry and the glorious rains that fell from above. The Mother of mothers, stands before me, created for us, gripped my hand, then offered me birth again, no longer lost, no longer gone beyond the dust and chalk-like graves, barred and churned from our ignorance, I hear her calling me to her breast and served with a new understanding, without commanding, without demanding – without the damning men place upon each other.

She, our new mother, call upon us to be brother to brother and hate no other, no more excess, no more entitlements, no more hate.

I called out to the others to join me before it was too late, “Come, my brother!” But they knew not what I confessed, knew nothing of this enlightenment, wanted nothing to do with this vision, this, our final salvation – our liberation. Sadly, what man has wrought, what greed has brought is a nothingness to those below. Little did I know, she reached out and held me tight, flying us both back into the clouds, beyond the light – but for man below, it was too late.

M TERESA CLAYTON

Creative Act - Life ~ Oil painting by Mariusz Lewandowski