Even as a child I found the mysteries more
fascinating than the facts – the notion that
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon once existed
opened wide my mind’s eye and sent me off
on the surf of curiosity out to where the
imagination bobbles loose on the rip tide of
dreams – facts numbed my senses and made
me howl to escape the orthodoxy of formulae
to wander out to where science meets magic,
out to where unknowns lace our knowledge
to where Nature sifts its jewels through the
sieve of mystery, deeper and deeper, into the
mystic of living cells and the miracle of birth
and marvel at the movement of a baby’s eye
or how the Nasrids built the Alhambra or the
way the blackthorn releases its petals like
snow along the quiet spring lanes– I could sit
content in my ignorance knowing there was
this mystery waiting, silently waiting in space
and time, waiting like diamonds in the
Kimberlitic rock forged from the molten
magma of supernovae, such obscurities
infused my imagination with a kaleidoscope
of sensation and most wondrous of all, how
you appeared like magic, abracadabra,
suddenly there like a star hidden behind
another star, abracadabra, you were revealed,
bright as a mystery.