We are marked,
Inexorably,
Between birth and death,
A tiny interval
In the infinitesimal tides
Of time.

This little life
Of woe and weal
Lays open
And exposed
To the universe,
Uncertain
Yet certain,
A part
And not a part
Of this
Unknowable whole.

We struggle and turn,
Restless,
Free
But not free,
Desiring meaning,
But finding none,
In the expanse
That lays beyond
The confined embodied mind
And the teetering soul.

We are marked
In the tightness of spaces and places,
In the limits of mind and thought,
In the desire to survive,
In the fickleness of relations.

We are marked,
But then we dream.

2/11/2014