Mental Wanderer

(Copyright Eric Wasiolek, Cavendish, November 25, 1994)

I am a mental wanderer

I have wandered

Alone the passages

Of time

In the midst

Of dreams

And found myself in places

I have never been

Or in lives

That I once lived

Or in dreams

That may someday come to be

I have wandered the lives

Of those who have come before me

And those who will follow me

I have wandered the times

In which I have never lived

And dreamed of times

Which may never come to be

I have walked on the dust of stars

And trammeled the paths of distant worlds

I have whizzed and whirled

In the spin of minute particles

And gazed the expanse

Of an infinite universe

I have felt the cold precision

By which a mechanical universe

Executes it tasks

And wondered whether

It even cares if we exist

I have fixed on the stars and

Wondered if we will ever be greeted

By beings far in advance of ourselves

Or whether there is some implicit universal code

Of silence or non-interference

Between galactic civilizations

I have pondered

The cling of droplets

On a leaf

Drenched with rain

And the relentless

March of forms

Forever recreating themselves

I have wondered

At the birth of living things

With sense, and touch, and volition

From inert matter

I have marveled at the emergence of forms

Which are intelligent

And able to contemplate

Their own being

I have traversed

The domain of inner space

And marveled at the

Universal structure of mind

The godly perfection

Of mathematical truths

The complicated web

Of human concepts

I have studied the intricate constellation

Of electrophysiological events

In the brain

And wondered whether

All that we think and feel and aspire to

Whether the sum total of human intelligence

And our great edifice of knowledge

Reduces to an electronic impulse

I have tinkered

With human technology

That mimics the imagination

Of that which can be wrought

By human hands

I have marveled at the sheer idiocy

And unbelievable ingenuity

Of human contraptions

And tried to imagine

What incredible technology

Will exist

Longer after I am gone

How many perplexing and staggering

And insurmountable problems

Will be simply solved

By the tools of tomorrow

Whether death, and hunger, and want

Will be eradicated

By some greater employment

Of our intelligence

I wonder what will be built

Upon the edifice that we have already constructed

Or whether baser instincts

Will destroy

All that we have striven

Through centuries of toil

And generations of hope

To create

I have watched the complex interactions

Of foreign civilizations

Like an independent observer

Upon a hilltop

Trying to foreguess

What will emerge

I have been intrigued

By the different ways

In which peoples of the world

Conceive of, and value, and live in

The world they have created for themselves

I have marveled

At the myriad of ways

In which human beings

Can organize themselves

And the complex interplay

Underlying human cooperation

And competition

I have walked the streets

Of those consumed in the world

And sought the company

Of contemplative souls

Who have striven

To separate themselves

From it

And in all of this great universe

I have never tired

Of its splendor

And its surprise

And its wonder

Copyright Eric Wasiolek

Cavendish November 25, 1994