When the moon rises over the flood lamps on the empty playground,

And flickers between the man-made glow that hides the stars,

I know that for all that is almost too present and full in its urgency,

There is an empty cradle, holding my deepest sorrow and joy.

It swells above and below my past and future,

Carries me through time, space, and the presentation

Of all objects, actions, and consciousness.

For all I seek to meet and be,

I am pulled and met and held

By the tissue of all that is,

Myself one piece,

You another,

Darting through night and day,

Through lighted and darkened paths

And the promises of a sovereign mind and life.

We, the people grown now,

Urging the world forward with the labor of routine and thought,

Moving a piece of fabric here; tearing another there; reconfiguring an infinitesimal fraction,

Are paid even less of the whole, but are whole in the smallness of our dashing shadows,

Cast against the light.

Here we are held in the night,

And in the day to follow,

In the life begun not long ago,

In play and rest beside each other,

Deep in the emptiness of everything,

Retained in the sky and on the ground,

Between the ever-reaching ceiling and floor,

Nestled very, very close on this scale,

Practically the same cosmic point,

Contiguous in space and the passage of time,

From now until the end.