The Cycle of One

He stood before me
poised on the edge of eternity…
balanced between two worlds.
He was a man – nothing more.
He felt no shame for what he might have been,
or fear for what he could become.

One step backward
would whisk him into a world
of drums and dance,
prairie fires and buffalo hunts
and to the life his forefathers
knew as the freedom of challenge
and the reality of a
do-or-die existence.

One step forward
would hurl him into a world
of neon lights,
traffic jams and sidewalk cafes
and to the life his children
knew as the modern beat of progress
and the grind, the grind
of civilization.

He was eternal.
he was a window to the past
and a door to the future.
When he bid me welcome to his circle
to sit and talk a while,
his words were kind and true.
In the rhythm of his harmony
I heard the voice of a People.

“We are Blackfoot.
We are the children
of the sun and earth and sky.
We share the cycle of the living
in all things that have gone before
and in all things that will come.
From all that has passed, we’ve taken
and to all that will pass, we give.”

He stretched his arm before him,
to the line where the earth met sky,
and held the setting sun
on the palm of his hand.
“This was once our land as far
as your eye can see.
It did not belong to us,
we belonged to it.
“We are of the prairie,
of the rain and grass
and brother to the wolf and buffalo.
We are as one to all things –
a circle without beginning or end –
the cycle of life – of being.
Of all, God is made.
In all, God IS.
There is no good or bad to these things.
There is no right or wrong.
There is only truth, for all things ARE.
We are.
We are the reality of truth
in the eternity of now.
The past lives only in our memories.
The future waits only in our vision.
We do not turn our backs on one
as we look to the other.
For every thing we see and do and hear
makes us what we are.
And every thing we know and dream and feel
makes us what we become.
For the things that have gone and will come,
we thank the Creator for these gifts.
…And these are our ways…”

When his story ended
I listened to the echo of his soul.
His voice of silence spoke
with far greater clarity
than all the words of the world.
And he stood before me centered and alone.
But, he was not alone.
He was bound as I am bound
to the cycle of all things that ARE.
In the wisdom that he shared
he gave to me a vision.
He did not show me something to believe in.
He gave me the key to unlock the secrets
of what I had always known.

©1994