First Gleam of Light

stars and planets fade
in first gleam of morning light
I know I’m alive

Kim M. Russell, 2^nd September 2018

My response to Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #48 Tagore’s Gitanjali

This is the first Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation of September 2018 and, as meteorological autumn starts this weekend, we have a new logo for the CD Weekend Meditation feature and the prompts will be poems by Rabindranath Tagore, starting with his Gitanjali poem(s). The weekend meditations will be all ‘distillations’ from a given poem by Tagore: the challenge is to create haiku or tanka from it or bring the ‘long poem’ back to its essential meaning and write a haiku (or tanka) about it.

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light,
and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds
leaving my track on many a star and planet.
It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself,
and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own,
and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach
the innermost shrine at the end.
My eyes strayed far and wide before
I shut them and said `Here art thou!’
The question and the cry `Oh, where?’ melt into tears of a thousand streams
and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance `I am!’

© Rabindranath Tagore (taken from “Gitanjali”)