POETRY Reading: Earthsong, by Lew Osteen

Performed by Val Cole

EARTHSONG, by Lew Osteen

Prologue
This orb or ours we oft abuse,
whence came the bang?
Who lit the fuse?

Canto One
O, lost of homeward eyes,
seeking upon the mocking skies,
where can be seen the founding plan,
or why or where it all began?

Out there somewhere is Genesis denied,
on some other world yet untried?
A Garden of begets without the sin,
a new Eden to begin again?

Chosen to be blessed and Festooned,
or orphans of creation forever marooned?
Is there truth in books took from shelves,
dried of words, we wrote ourselves?

Words of heavens to abide?
Or maybe not, if Adam lied.
Who are we? Where do we belong?
Is Earth our home or is our Earthsong – wrong?

Canto Two
So, yearning hearts and hopeful eyes,
seek upon the mocking skies.
No fear of what might be out there.
What might scare someone from here?

There is no fear that will stop us from knowing,
why life advances or ceases going.
Is it so that silver might buy another lie,
to crucify the other guy?

Or gold might drop,
upon a counter top.
To bind and seal,
a bloody deal?

The soul aches to know and the mind to find,
what in heaven or hell left us behind.
To know is why, you and I, so very soon,
on warm July, flew the earth and walked the moon.

Canto Three
Does anyone care out there?
Are we alone upon this sphere?
Is this all there is and ever will be,
we alone, in splendid singularity?

We of the midnight power,
holding at bay the midnight hour,
counting down the doomsday wait,
inside a burning house by a broken gate.

Canto Four
For what reason,
was God, man for a season?
Is there such worth,
upon the earth?

Here it’s plain to see,
only traces of divinity.
Not God? Then what?
Out of nothing is not.

Are there worlds far away,
where gods mold other clay?
Some golden universe,
not seeking us?

Perhaps by other measures,
our souls are not treasures,
but spirits of chance meant to be,
castaways, forever adrift, on a lonely sea.

And if we saw the truest light,
cutting through the distant night,
would we run away and hide,
or welcome strangers to abide
For hard it would be,
for us to see,
to understand,
some distant land,

When among the being,
within our seeing,
that we can touch – we don’t touch, very much.

Canto Five
And weary as we all are,
long-turning a burning star,
who knows, but that it glows to warm some other place.
And may someday, go away to warm another space.

Or do we trust that we must, by heavenly decree,
be ever warmed by the firestar, just because we are?
On any god-talk wherever gods might walk, is it said: humankind is rising – or humankind is dead?

Which Earthsong
is wrong?
Do we belong outbound on some unseen sea,
or probing inside for our destiny?

Perhaps we are, as we have decided, with reason and with rhyme,
casting lots upon the blankets of our time,
the fairest and the best of all the rest, and there is nothing anywhere,
that would dare compare to our sphere?

The answer is as old as history.
We seek where lies life’s mystery.
Is it upon the near or far.
The closest moon or the furthest star.

Desperate souls seek to see
the source of creation’s majesty.
To be redeemed out of Nod
and look upon the face of God.

FIN