by LJ Frank

 The ancient voice of Qōhelet* begins as a feint breeze swirling in the brain, then becomes a howling wind, a forewarning, like an operatic prelude pointing to an unquenchable thirst for redemption but questioning whether this too is vanity.

And while the oceans rise, Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier melts and insurance companies make their case for the final word about climate change, as affordable ocean shore living vanishes and moves inland. What was now becomes treasures below the surface waiting for a future to be discovered, and a missing sailor is but one skeleton among tens of thousands: But what is new under the sun, all is futile is the song of a lost chorus, and the ringing in the ears is more provocative than a case of tinnitus – should one answer the call, hallucinatory or not?

Nothing is fresh the voice says on the other end of the line – the materially rich speak to each other in the mirror, a reflection of their fortune, while the hungry traveler wanders about thinking the real stuff is within their grasp, but as a shareholder I know better, for the corporation is sovereign, and the impoverished are collateral damage fighting for a misplaced cause and migrating to another state of trust, and may in passing find such hope is in reality a lottery ticket amid a Kierkegaardian fear and trembling.

And to exist costs more than advertised as the famished know, in want of fairness on the checkerboard of deposits and withdrawals, but there is no room in the mausoleum of the soul for the accumulation of the painted toys, while a child’s dies of starvation inside the jail cell of an oligarchy, and the security guards peering through the camera lens are merely pawns looking at each other having become guards of their own imprisonment.

Yet the human soul utters to itself, be still, the hour is hastening on, and one knows buried deep within, that the sacred is the longing cry of a desirous imagination, translated into a leap of faith into that which was and is never visible, except through the mind’s eye, and in turn that eye’s quest is manifested through the telescopic gazing to catch a glimpse of the image that it seeks – the creation of Being in which there is no edge to the infinite.

*Hebrew for teacher