Inside The Hearts' Walls

I entered this world questioning, and wanting to know,
and met a bright auric fog, with a warm golden glow.
Each radiant dot a new thought, a new place to begin?
So much to absorb, I leapt, and dove in.

Now I wonder, 'who am I, to think myself so good,
if that's all I've been taught, and ever understood?'
When there's light all around, from the sky and the sea,
how can I tell, if any light, comes from me?

It floors me that Newton, so great among all those who search,
wrote that what wonders HE saw, was only thanks to the perch,
he found on the shoulders, of those giants before.
If that's so then, could any of us claim even a little bit more?

Could I write half as well, without all the great authors I've read?
Could I sing any songs, without others' songs in my head?
The light all around me, that dazzles and warms,
I see now, I think, its source and its forms.

A billion dim dots, make an awestriking whole,
each person not yet forgotten, beams rays on my soul.
Even those deep in the past, and lost to antiquity,
their lights still refract, in an anonymous ubiquity.

It seems a culture is built, a speck at a time,
added to through the ages, by lights of minds much like mine.
Philosophy and science, technology and art,
everything advances, by piece and by part.

And so it must be, that in our every endeavor,
the great things that we make, we make working together.
Thus all ambitions I plan, and any craft I might try,
like everyone else, I'll be aided, by the billion lights in the sky.

By Turtle Shell

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This is one of the poems written for submission to perhaps be read during the choir concert. Whether or not it will be one of the ones chosen has not yet been decided.