March 1999
By Judge William Charles Gordon
"A Window on
Eternity"
I stand beside my garden window~As stillness from
the scene envelopes me in deep serenity~With neither space nor time to furrow my
contemplation
The scene is not a static one~Changes have occurred, as
flowers fading fast attest (Also, the shriveled plants are shrinking back to earth)
But in the moment that is now~I feel the touch of
timelessness~That seems to reach unbroken into eternity
Suddenly, a flash invades the border of my sight~And
drives me from my reverie~With a burst of wonderment
A golden finch has crossed my view~And converges on the
corn flower stalks~Together with his modest mate
They gorge upon the crowns of seeds (that still remain to
beckon them)~Unconscious of the splendid sight they make~Or of the spent hulls that they
toss upon the ground
And then, a glint of movement turns my head~In time to
glimpse~A squirrel in camouflage darting along the garden path~Beneath the shadowed pools
of grays and browns~A clump of seed clasped in his jaws
Sometimes a squirrel can seem to fly~As he starts atop
the tallest trees~To racing from branch to branch as if on a trapeze~From which to soar
aloft towards warmer climes
But trees are rooted in the ground~And squirrels are
bound to them and the earth~And cannot go beyond
And so the squirrel prepares his wintry cache~Beneath the
grove of trees~To use until the signs return once more with the tidings of rebirth to come
I gaze upon my visitors again~And breathe the moment in
and hold it there~To resurrect when darker days appear
Soon the squirrel and feathered friends depart~And while
their images will fade~These underlying truths remain:
That though no living creature can escape~From the phases
preordained through which we pass~We all remain as part of a continuum~Stretching into
infinity
And though our marching course is brief- For each phase
that ends there is a new beginning~Just as the seed in cyclic certainty proliferates, when
time is ripe~Prepared by what has gone before
And, though a passing phase may bring a drastic
change~Beauty and harmony may yet abound~For those who search to find them.
____________________________
About the Author: Bill Gordon is a
retired family court judge, who lives with his wife in a cottage at Cokesbury Village in
Hockessin, Delaware. He inspires us all by participating and placing high in the Senior
Olympics and by his exemplary community service in "Churches Take a Corner," a
group of mostly black churchmen working to help rid their streets and "corners"
of drug problems. Judge Gordon's e-mail address is this: tribill@bellatlantic.net.
Editor's Comment: Judge Gordon also
has shown us how the use of verse can express a senior's view of life by reminding us that
we all have windows through which we can "see" the world around us and be
humbled by the thought that the scenes of life we see will be seen by generations yet to
come long after we've departed our planet. In contemplating this thought, I'm
reminded of something that Madame Jehan Sadat said at a luncheon I attended this past
fall: the former first lady of Egypt, in talking about world peace, quoted from an old
Islamic proverb -- "Work for the world as if you were to live here forever, but
prepare for paradise as if you were to die tomorrow."
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