“When I Awake, I Am Still with Thee”
In all the waking hours
The Tentacle of Time
Give channel to each living thing:
The bird on wing;
The mole moving in darkness underground;
The cricket chanting its evening song;
The primeval whale sporting in chilly seas,
or floating noiselessly in turbulent waters;
In mountain crevice or sprawling meadow
The delicate beauty of color-stained flower
or fragile leaf;
High above the timber line
The sprig of green dares wind and snow;
In the barren parchedness of desert waste
The juiceless shrub and waterlogged cactus;
High in the treetop the green-pearled fruit
of olive mistletoe,
and the soft gray stillness of creeping moss;
The infant, the growing child,
The stumbling adolescent, the young adult,
The man full blown or stooped with years;
The Tentacles of Time
Give channel to each living thing.
And beyond this?
Thoughts that move the grace of being;
Light thoughts that dance and sing
Untouched by gloom or shadow or the dark;
Weighty thoughts that press upon the road
with tracks that blossom into dreams
or shape themselves in plan and scheme;
Thoughts that whisper;
Thoughts that shout;
Thoughts that want without rest,
Seeking, seeking, always seeking;
Thoughts that challenge;
Thoughts that soothe;
The Tentacles of Time
Give channel to each living thing.
Out from the House of Life
All things come,
And into it, each returns again for rest.
When I awake,
I am still with Thee.
