The Frozen World of the South Pole

Frosted Window Pane...CLICK to enlarge

" I paused to listen
to the silence.

My breath,
crystallized as it passed my cheeks, drifted on a breeze
gentler than a whisper. 

The wind vane pointed
toward the South Pole. 
Presently the wind cups
ceased their gentle turning
as the cold killed the breeze. 

My frozen breath hung
like a cloud overhead.

The day was dying,
the night was being born,
but with great peace. 

Here were the imponderable processes and forces
of the cosmos,
harmonious and soundless. 


HARMONY,
that was it ! 

That was what came out of the silence -
a gentle rhythm,
the strain of a perfect chord,
the music of the spheres,
perhaps.

It was enough to catch that rhythm,
momentarily to be myself a part of it. 

In that instant I could feel no doubt of man's oneness with the universe. 

The conviction came that
that rhythm
was too orderly,
too harmonious,
too perfect to be a product of blind chance -
that,
therefore,
there must be purpose
in the whole
and that man was part of that whole
and
NOT
an accidental offshoot.

It was a feeling that transcended reason;
that went to the heart of man's despair
and found it groundless. 

The universe is a cosmos,

NOT  a  chaos;

man is as rightfully a part of that cosmos

as are the day and night."

Admiral Richard E. Byrd
{ finding peace and God in the frigid twilight }

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