Horizons

 Horizons

 

                                                                              

                                                                             

The horizon disappears in a white-out,

A blinding blizzard that erases the periphery of all things, 

Including the line that separates earth from sky.  

The perplexed traveler, frozen in his footsteps, 

Disappears in the crystalline cloud, his world a blur, 

Perhaps wondering what a slightly darker wrinkle 

In the shrouded closeness might mean.

                                                                              

Horizon circumscribes one’s visual world, 

And when engulfed by fog, as with snow,

That familiar world shrinks and all but vanishes,

The skyline erased and replaced

With an opaque vapor, thick yet without substance.

The grayish white nothingness closing-in on the observer

Might serve to prompt him, without the distraction of the wider world,

To look inward at life’s other shades of gray, 

Or to imagine distant horizons, and yearn for what lies beyond them.      

                                                                              

                                                                            

The sailor keeps a weather eye 

On a dark horizon fast approaching.

The message is urgent.

For, if what’s coming is a low line 

Of roiling, sulphurous black clouds,

A squall line’s fury will quickly wreak havoc

On an unprepared boat. A menacing horizon is 

A call to action: run for shelter or reef the sail, 

Tether down or go below. 

                                                                              

                                                         

Subject to the vagaries of weather, 

Horizon is also tied to those of the mind.

The observer sees familiar low rolling hills ahead, and

Says, correctly, “The horizon is about five miles away,

And I can drive there in five minutes”.

The same observer viewing the Rockies for the first time,

While traveling west across the plains, says, again, 

“About five miles away, maybe a little more”.

He is surprised that it takes hours 

To reach mountains that he can see, 

A horizon that is actually fifty or more miles distant.

Until the horizon of the mind expands 

With the acceptance of new experience, familiarity clouds perception. 

The mind believes what it sees - “where I live, the horizon is five miles away” -

Then sees what it believes -” the horizon everywhere is five miles away” - 

Even when it isn’t.