Bright Existence

Meridian Plinth

Meridian Plinth The gravestone-looking slab donated to the college for instructing students about light and dark and the rotation of the world stands solemnly in the courtyard being landed on by buff-colored sparrows with shining breasts and claws. It is summer in the suburbs and the voices of students seem to travel a long way from the field as light has had to travel from far off to abide in this rock. Two steel pegs and a chart that looks like a quarter of a pie etched into the granite will show the passage of the sun, and in the grooved triple name of the donor, in the E for east and W for west, in the other grooves flecked by mica today the light from noon looks a bit forlorn. The seven-souled vestments of the flesh were supposed to keep light in mankind. Secret names should have been learned by now to ease its passage home, but were not learned. And the sun striking down at noon like this— because it insists on moving—the sun seems ancillary to the stone, and weaker; it has to move and last forever, or a little less long than the imagination. If you stand very near the plinth you can feel the stored heat of its mass, and the different kind of light being saved for you. The parallel worlds are stacked up and rub against each other, the worlds we read of in the texts that have to fit neatly inside each other, one after another, like a child's bathtub blocks fit, or as your lover fits. It is the same in the universe: surely the dark world holds the other close; 49 and when the time comes, something from outside fate will come to retrieve the divine sparks. As dandelions travel from the dry hills today, or the woman with the baby, coming across the lawn: maybe they are the redeemers. Remember how the heavenlymessengers sometimes look like tourists, arriving unawares, and after they feast they become special. When all the sparks have been retrieved, the cosmos will be finished, the milky light of the suburbs cleared of blossoms, of physical terror, and of doves with their responsible white shears, trimming the fabric of the day . . . But of the suffering inherent in matter, what shall we say? That it goes back when we go back? That it will die when we do? If it goes there with us how far away? Perhaps it will be left, and the plinth can hold it for us, and go on with its job of being patient in the sun while the mountain makes more irreducible granite, more of itself. The plinth was meant to please and instruct, holding odd shards of radiance inside; it wants to live. Stand next to it. In the other noon, it casts no shadow. 50 ...