The Journey Of An Inch Poem by Mystic Qalandar

Before the first note of time,
this world was already turning—
faster than caravans raising dust,
faster than ships cleaving the deep,
faster than proud wings outrunning sound,
faster than every shining page
woven from sky and star and mystery.

For whoever seeks the horizon's eye
finds only the mirror of their own limit;
whoever measures the earth with their feet
merely traces a circle
around their own circumference.

This world is not discovered;
it dawns.
Not through motion,
but through transformation.
Not through distance,
but through depth.

The journey is one inch—
as vast as the space
between two heartbeats,
yet it demands the courage
for a soul to shed its armor.

Harder than crossing oceans,
for it can drown the traveler;
humbler than conquering peaks,
for it lays the conqueror in dust;
more intoxicating than any destination,
for it is the end of all seeking.

It is the path of unknowing:
descending into the waterfall of thought,
journeying through the graveyards of the self,
passing the sorcerous illusions of memory,
escaping the fairies of desire,
arriving at that voiceless silence
that cradles the noise of the world.

And there, in that infinite point—
that dimensionless zero
where the circumference of being
meets its center,
where no compass
and no mathematics can arrive,
where the last trace of 'here'
dissolves into 'is'—

one beholds a revelation:

this vast world was never a thing
to be reached,
but a presence to be dwelt in.
It was not far, but within:
the whole universe breathing
in the soul of a single atom,
everything folded into the seed of one,
the eternal 'now' swaying
in the cradle of breath.

It was not waiting to be found,
but waiting to be remembered.
It did not stand at the end of the road,
but leaned
at the threshold of your being,
whispering the name
you had forgotten
was your own.

The journey is one inch—
and that inch
is the only distance
that ever existed.

—MyKoul