• Sky, sea, clouds. The silence of it all presses on my ears.
    I look out to the water, stillness.
    the calm before the storm,
    but the storm never comes.
    in a sea of stillness, a heavieness hangs over the air
    like it's never moved.
    an eternity is spent here, and nothing changes.
    the fish never move,
    the plants never bloom,
    the waves never crash,
    the sun never rises,
    the sounds never ring,
    the birds never take flight.
    an eternity is spent in as little as a moment.
    you can take forever gazing at the picture,
    and never feel like your there.
    but here it is,
    pressing around us,
    an eternal stillness.
    the picture before us never moves,
    is this the reality we all have to face?
    nothing is real anymore.
    the details seem to mock me,
    as I stare at the never-changing sea.
    I close my eyes, the scene changes.
    a plain filled with long grass,
    the grass doesn't move,
    the breeze never blows,
    the bison pause in mid-stampede,
    all is still.
    i close my eyes again, again it all changes.
    an ash filled landscape, a volcano.
    the lava never spues forth,
    the magma never appears,
    the ashes hang like a still curtain.
    I reach out and brush them.
    they stay suspended.
    I look at the blackened sky and scream to the gods,
    what has happened? where am i?
    the gods are silent.
    I fall forward on my knees, wishing for time to run again.
    and run it does.
    fast-forward,
    centuries pass in the blink of an eye
    I watch the world die around me.
    space, void of life or movement,
    presses around me,
    I realize that time has no meaning here.
    and endless expanse of nothingness.
    I curl up and let time pass.
    -MVR