Those who follow my blog know this was created as a way to experiment and combine my writings and paintings. This post is slightly different. The painting is inspired by a special person, Bill Barnes. So, instead of posting an essay that I have written, I'm sharing a poem written by one of the most influential people in my life. Bill was my uncle, physician, and friend. He was a skilled surgeon who never lost the curiosity of things beyond science. Tragically, he died too young. Below is a poem found locked in a safe, with the words "For My Family". One last thing he gave us to ponder...
Have you ever looked, at night, at the sky?
Have you ever looked with your mind not your eye?
Alone with your thoughts you strain and try
To see where they end, those dots in the sky
With all of your mind you try and try
To find those that still live and those that have died
But stop, you think, how can this be?
They do look the same, to you and to me
Is there no way to see, no wisdom to steal?
To know which is false, to see that which is real
Now look again, with me, at the sky
All those dark places, no dots in the sky
And yet beyond us, in a world that is real
Something, someone a glance will steal
At that same dark space that to us seemed so real
And there at the center of that void in the sky
There is a bright light, as seen by their eye
And so to my family, as our lives go by
Think of me as that light somewhere in the sky
I will always be with you, if only you try
And look with your mind and not with your eye
For your mind it can travel through that void that is black
Then stop where it wants, turn around and look back
And there at the center of that which was black
That light once thought gone now has come back
I wonder if life, like those dots in the sky
Can be understood, by you; by I?
Does it really have a beginning and then just pass by?
Or is it like the stars that we see in night’s sky
Forever visible when love is your eye
Have you ever looked, at night, at the sky?
Have you ever looked with your mind not your eye?
