Benign Extrapolation

The show was over. Still I sat,
Then slowly swept through space a hand,
Palm out, across the screen
As if the line of its ascending arc
Erased the last two hours
In the six or seven seconds of a flowing motion.
Merely one more nearly satisfactory story,
Almost memorable, now vanished,
Traceless, into air, its only tangible bequest
This sweep of hand across a face.
But then the hand continued, onward, outward, upward…

Think of standing on a cliff top over ocean,
To shade your eyes against the sun.
Perhaps your glance would curve along
A straggling line of blighted trees,
The plodding flight of some drab bird,
Until it crossed the cliff top’s unseen verge
And your extending arm continued on to point
Beyond the boundary into space and mist and light,
An insubstantial merge of outer sight with inner vision:
The cliff now rank on rank of slender rowan towers.
Far above, the sparkle of a soaring bird of fire.

To feel a passing pleasure, see the almost perfect,
Like a fuzzy glimpse of heaven,
Is to know the nearly real, the not quite there,
The all but done. So much seems right
And yet you sense some flaw within,
A loss of flowing line, an emptiness of center.
That is when you need to sweep a hand
Across its vague, distorted space,
Transcend its limitations and extend the arc
Intended in its bright beginning
Until what might have been is realer than what is.

Always to correct a crippled curve
And, in the mind at least, complete its aspiration,
Lead it to the sky, and so
Apply, wherever you might find the need,
A process of benign extrapolation,
Is to love the highest, seen or unseen,
Keep its creed untarnished in your heart.
This is the first and last of earthly duty:
To accept no partial joy,
Nor live resigned to glimpse a heaven nearly sent,
And never to content yourself with merely mitigated beauty.