All The Time In The World

Welcome, Old One

Welcome, you who knows

courage, you who knows

how to stay until the final breaking

of light after dark.

Your next breath touches

the porous sponge

of your lungs and there you are

resting crossing over.

Welcome, Old One

who has known how

to come back again

and again from the One Place.

Though you could stay

in the shining burning spreading

blood ocean of your heart

though it has surged over the low

wall and lost all definition

though it could keep you

breathless in its weightless

immensity though you could

easily forget how to walk or

speak or pray though you cannot

possibly behold it

Old One, you have.

Kept your eyes open and looked back

at the blinding iris asking

for the Nameless One

to answer.

How have you been asking?

Have you touched fingertips

to soil to steady have you

sunk fingers into soil

and let all resistance

disappear as if dirt

was the deepest densest

endless element have you

taken pigment into pores

forgotten the boundary ever

was real ever was rigid—

have you?

And how have you come back

so new, Old One?

How did you choose to wake up

when there was not much

reason to or too many reasons to?

How did you sleep and how

did you stand and how did you

sing when all the world around you

was nothing like this

and nothing you did could

change it?

I don’t know how

each heart finds its freedom

despite the rage of the roar

that howls over it despite

the weight of the door.

I just know the insistence

that lives beyond the promise

of death that never

silences that only sings

and calls out and screams and cries out

unceasing and eternal and impatient

and with all the time in the world.

Helena Turner
Nov 2025