January 27, 2019

Crystallized Porcelain

By In Poetry

Crystallized porcelain alights on the window of the poet, waiting for him to notice. He watches as the sun melts her just enough to fall away and glide on the wind like a smoke. She turns, rises and falls like a bedroom breath, glittering through his life, a chaos of structured complexity both silver and white, attempting to blend in but trailing inspiration like the traveling nine goddesses. The poet finds her again later in life, recognizing the unique curve and angle of her soft porcelain. He reaches out a warm finger and touches her edge only to watch her shrink away and disappear.

The poet wonders at the magnificence of the moment, feeling it limited by the boundaries of his own mind, unable to push it outside of himself except through words written and transmitted into the eyes and hearts of others, potentially radiated out into space. Everything is absorbed, combined and reformed in the stellar furnace to one day again reform and alight upon a future window of another poet in several billion years. But the uniqueness of this moment will not come again, will it? And if not, will the memory persist in any form? And will a generation of curious individuals searching for outward meaning millions or billions of light years away listen in, see the words and know all of the things that had to happen perfectly from the birth of a star to the assembly of dust into the physical form of a goddess and then into the imagined metaphysical partner searching for awareness with a poet, and the barriers of ego and self that restricted the words which were sent anyway? Will they know, and in that knowing, find within themselves a gully to slide down and fall into that peaceful sea of universal awareness?

Written by Jon Hillenbrand

Jon Hillenbrand is a Chicago-based artist working in photography and filmmaking. He has over 15 years of professional award-winning experience working both locally and nationally in television, print and web advertising. He currently calls Evanston, IL home.