Article
Wonder Unceasing
April 22, 2021
Honoring the Author of Creation and mindful of our place in time and space and eternity, with gratitude—Susan Smetzer-Anderson
A Meditation for Earth Day 2021.
Wonder Unceasing
In the beginning was
the Word
and I—
a spark
alight—was birthed
in pre-history, before
the sun and moon played tug-o-war
with the roiling ocean waves and
amoeba linked arms
to crawl upon shores
canvased with diamond shards, before
ants loitered in swamps limned
with ferns tall as trees, before
Carboniferous collisions wrought
mountains— the Appalachians, the Herynians, and the Urals—
who arose, yawned
and shook their manes
to warn Hylonomus away, before
the first frigid winds whooped and
bore diaphanous dragonflies
upon looping currents of ephemeral delight
and lizards crawled into cavernous maws
of crocodiles drowsing
in primordial ecstasy.
I was known before all this—
with You
I beheld
the moss-cloaked river lands
and the long-tailed pterosaur
who flexed her wings on
thermal currents to cast
horseshoe crabs in shadow, even
as they swirled
elemental signatures in crystalline sands—
swept away and then remade—
filament strokes traced Earth’s heartbeat.
In Your mind
all overflowed—
lava and ice,
firestorm and creeping glacier.
The triceratops raised his bulbous horn
in the land of Larimidia,
and the Confuciusornis sanctus sang his song
in the airs of Liaoning,
and in the distance
You saw
my unformed substance
flickering like a candle
in my mother’s womb, dark
and dense as a black hole
punctuating the vast
and sparkling heavens—
an asterisk awaiting
attention,
waiting for You
even as stalactites grew
downward
and stalagmites lurched
upward
in emerald columns
emulating nebulae—
the Pillars
of Creation
blew up
Hubble’s eye.
We are tinder
ready to spark,
moment
to atomic moment,
and You
saw it all
even as we nestled
in Your ample heart, the very cavern
of Wonder.
