Air Fire Water & Stone Poem by Tom Courtney

Air, fire, water and stone
A Greek alchemy and a Greek tragedy
erupt one day in April in L.A.
in a year many years hence
and in a day eternally called the modern
What age has ever been less?

Have we at last come to the present?
or did we turn some corner
The future is rent from time?
the past is torn from its moorings?
and this place
the bed of our being
shall be recognized as that from which
we seek escape?

And will we ever know us,
when we survey the infinite ahead and behind?
and calculate with our mathematics that our moment
vanishes into immateriality -
infinitesimal
the breath of our lives lost in ignorance and ignominy?

Air fire water and stone
arise and fly in our faces
one day in April in L.A. and we freeze in ice
To see and be seen
All is stillness
All spins within this circle of the known and the unknown
All lies within the hands of God
as this human thing toddles in chaos

Justice flickers and flounders in a courtroom
and a nation weeps and tears at its flesh
One proud moment - a hubris that ignites a terror
a single emotional wave sweeps across the heavens
and cries that man will never learn
asks what comes from this passage?

Fire erupts in the air
Stone burns into ash - the elements shift and re-form
in the eyes of little children and the cataracts of age
Strength and youth fly in the night, apart from themselves
What sets this human apart from the animal?
This illusion of meaning
and the destruction of one-another
in jealousy, hatred and rage?

Earth's species flee by instinct
to survive another day
As the seed of the mighty pine swirls up and pops in the fire
One forest dies to give birth to another
Air fire water and stone

The speck and the behemoth roll and flounder
but only man tears his cloth and smears his chest
This curse of aspiration
This blessing of inspiration
are wrapped in neurological and isolated synapses
triggered within the law of lawlessness
Time races and falters - halts for all we know
then grinds over us as the wheel rolls on again

Lives, words and words, and lies
We lie buried within our data
swirling down into a vortex - split, punctuated and disjointed
Myths explode as God sprinkles tears upon
those which they called Hope

And after five days the weather report says
we had a light sprinkle over L.A.
cast forth from a dry and forlorn sky
and just to set us about washing our cars again
in this mindless repetition

Sitting upon this curb
upon this street
not seeing this place called metropolis
One might come to wonder how at all
the weather is known
What are these cycles of the elements
Air, fire, water and stone?