Tale of the time traveler

Alternate / working title: in a puff of smoke

in the cold of winter december
on the flatlands swathed in ice
upon the miles of darkened wasteland
under the grey of a sunless sky

behold somewhere this golden lamplight
within the hollow of two cupped palms
a glow of ever enchanting beauty
like new life within a world that's died

warmth spreads like a thawing brook
as spring fills the frozen air
a lung-full of this wild-awake, till
the red glow blooms to stir and shake

to wake the universe that lies unmade

and to make the reality that sleeps
to take white light and to throw it out
in throbbing multi colored streams

the wizened man is all but alive
in delirious slumber he seems to sit
between a moment in ecstatic rapture
reaching the divine within his self

and stormy waves a-crash and rock
to the moment he lets it ebb away
and mesmerized as he falls to the ground
by the dance of beauty and its foe

of truth and falsehood, of up and down
and reality that can come and go
like opposites in an incontrary world
a puff of meaning in an eternity of void

a traveler searching for the spring of life
over horizonless expanses of space and time
hoping to catch another glimpse of that truth
or hold a drop from that many coloured prism

he travels on behind his eyes
on the flatlands swathed in ice
upon the miles of darkened wasteland
of his sunless heart and mind