Sleep fled. 
Useless to try. 
His work was finished. 
Tomorrow he was going home.
Despite his exhaustion, 
he felt a strange sense of peace.
He climbed to the roof of his hotel. 
Far away, on the other side of the world, 
his city of glittering glass towers 
neon-blazed all through the night,  
but night wrapped in silence and darkness 
this low slung city of ancient buildings. 
No late night revelers shouted and laughed. 
The Guard had put an end to that. 
Their brutal, egotistical emptiness 
flicked only momentarily through his mind.  
This was not a night for sadness. 
He had done what he could, 
brought healing to some 
and accepted what he could not change. 
He looked over the city and then upwards.  
The sky blazed with light. 
The Milky Way was a white swathe. 
The light from its neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy 
took two million years to reach him.  
Two million years! 
I am gazing at snapshots 
from thousands and millions of years 
before my brief moment on earth 
yet that light reaches me, 
touches me, speaks to me
of connection, unity and belonging. 
Am I not connected to everything.
Am I not these stars, this sky, 
these people lying quietly in their beds.  
Are they not my brothers and my sisters.  
Are we not all one?
                        

I am the wind that ripples the water,
the sun rising from the sea,
the dark clouds scudding the sky,
the leaf that falls from the tree,
the womb in which I was woven,
ten million million words that whirl,
my love who shares my body and mind,
the little child’s hand enclosed by mine.
I cannot lift my hand against you, my brother,
abuse or oppress you, my sister,
exploit you, my neighbor,
or burden you, my little ones.
We are all the wind that ripples the water,
the curling swell upon the sea,
the clouds that billow, wisp or scud,
the momentary glory in the west
the darkening mystery of the night.