An Ode To Reason The Full Version Poem by Tom Billsborough

AN ODE TO REASON

Stanza One
Blossoming ofNebulae
Astonish the focused eye.
Miracles ofspoken words
Reshape the stars in
Time's expanding resonance.
The golden Eagle hovers
Upon the cusp of Silence.
Below my feet the fibrous
Roots and sensatefungi
Form the forest sounding
Boards alerting peril.
Such counterpointing
Fugues I chose as subjects
For this present anthem.

Stanza Two
Waters of our consciousness,
We feel the Moon's embrace,
The tactile and the mobile sea
Floods through our veins, our dreams!
To navigate with reason, seeking out
The true reality of things.
So let redundant Spirits
Dwell within their self
Delusions and their dungeon walls,
Or graveyards with their headstones
Faded by corrosive Time.
What need have we for Gods
And the impotence of prayer?
The sea of Reason beckons.

Stanza Three
Tides turn.Subliminal
Matrix of our souls
In her immense bed restlessly
She turns forever
Restless in her dreams between
Pacific seascapes and the towering
Waves ofimminent nightmare.
And the sweet peace of slack water.
I call her she for, though inanimate,
She is wholly feminine,
since deep withinher lies
The uterus of life, hot
Geysers bubblingwith potential.
The long journey to the Word.


Refrain
Free our minds from ritual fear,
The guilty source of many sorrows.
Let Reason be the Word,
Unerring as the flight of swallows.

Stanza Four
The fugue of Time installs
Its interlacing melodies.
Gravity, the true creator.
Blossom, nebulae. Stars
Scatter like the bright leaves of Fall
Before a random wind.
They seek no special purpose.
So why should we whose senses
Flourish in the actual
Believe in our eternity.
The swallow swims through air
Its clock and compass set
With immaculate precision,
Alighting on its summer station.





Stanza Five
Tides turn. Tick-tock
The metronome of waves,
So many waves of Time's
Creation, particles and waves
A time for splendid indecision!
ChallengingPresumptive reason.
The Golden Eagle swoops
Its golden eyes aglow
Within my brow a poem forms
Seeking out its prey!
Tick tock tick tock tick tock
Clickingheels on pavements
She has lovely ankles!
Life's perpetual motion.

Stanza Six
Aloft the Eagle's sharpened
Focus gathers in minutae.
We seek the specks of planets
Owned by distant stars.
The beauty's in the seeing
And seeing who we are
Below the level of our conscious
Trite philosophies.
The miracle of sight and self
Awareness honed by gradual
Mutations to complexity.
Below my feet the roots
And sensate fungi recreate
Their own equivalent of vision.





Stanza Seven
Tides turn, obedient
To the Moon's reflective mirror
And down the neuron paths
My thoughts must follow
The promptings of the instigator.
Who is the hidden one?
All seeing and all knowing!
One day we shall discover.
Ondouble helix wheels
Are spun rich tapestries
Ofour genetic histories.
While Time's relentless arrow
Draws us on towards tomorrow
Certainas the flight of swallows.

REFRAIN
No need to pause for prayers..
Which ring and ring on telephones.
On old unanswered phones
To One who is not there.

Stanza Eight
The Painted Lady swoops
Upon the bugloss spires
And slowly spreads her wings
To catch the pulsing rays,
The final generation
From Africa's far shores.
Rosetta has now settled
Upon her stone of destiny.
And Cassini's bright cocoon
Alights on Saturn's rings
And in her fiery fall
There is no end to knowing.
What splendour still awaits
Beyond Aladdin's doors!


Stanza Nine

Slack water. The tide turns
A ripple in the undergrowth.
The Eagle now abandons
His suspended silence
As wings fold and the waves
Fold over the level shore.
Drake's drum beats
In my brow its Alexandrines
Calls up my quixotic being.
And who is she, my metronome,
Stilettos clicking on the prom?
I turn again as does the tide
To meet a glancing eye.
There is no pain in dreaming!

Refrain
Free our minds from ritual fear,
The guilty source of many sorrows.
Let Reason be the Word,
Unerring as the flight of swallows.

StanzaTen
You shadowme, curator
Of myself, you catalogue
Each thought, each act, and editor
Since you rewrite the scripts
Of incidents half forgot,
Perverting my experience.
The sea chokes too with debris.
The World must hark to Reason.
Only by creation shall we know
Ourselves and our desire
To guard our natural beauty.
Arise now, Aphrodite,
Upon the gesso ground
And may the Goddess. rule.

StanzaEleven
The tide must turn again
To save the Eagle and the swallow,
Our oxygen in plankton
Our habitats tomorrow,
Our mother sea. Female
Reason and her caring nature
Must prevailto end this peril.
What use the flowering Nebulae,
Our planetary probes, our libraries
Of Data when greed has blinded
Us until eternity?
The heels are clicking on the shore.
The metronome of Time
Insists that she is heard!