The First Gathering

The waiting soil grew warm with hidden flame, 
And shapes emerged where silence held its breath.
Soft shadows stirred as life first rose to claim
While plains awoke from stillness held in depth. 
Each creature rose, unique in form and frame
From trembling fawn to lion’s steady wrath.
And earth, in wonder, watched its children rise, 
A thousand beating hearts beneath new skies. 

A hush lay over all that life had grown,

Its motions slowed as if the day were bound;

The fields held breath in stillness all their own,

Awaiting change that gathered without sound.

Yet through that fullness stirred another mind,

A quiet summons rising from the ground;

As if the world drew calm to shape anew,

A form that held both many and the few.

Then from that quiet rose a human form,
Its breath first drawn from air the earth had kept;
It sensed the day still holding light and warm,
A world that watched as consciousness first stepped.
Both one and two, it stood within that norm,
A presence through which all the living swept;
Male and female, shaped in shared design,
To walk with care through every living line.

A blessing met them as they stood in light,
A charge to grow where every root could reach;
The world lay open, steady in their sight,
Its fields lay open, quiet in their sweep
To tend, to guide, to keep the living right,
Not rule by force but learn from what they’d teach;
For fruit and seed lay ready on the land,
And every life held sustenance at hand.

A store of life lay gathered in the seed,
Set deep in earth before their steps began;
The branches bent with fruit for every need,
And silent grain rose while rivers ran;
For beast and bird, for every wandering breed,
Green leaf and tender shoot filled hill and span;
The earth gave food to all that moved or stayed,
And every being ate what earth had made.