Before words
There is being.
Not nothing.
A raw there-ness,
unnameable,
There is change.
The flicker,
the shift,
the river that refuses stillness.
There is continuity.
Not permanence,
but enough carry-over
that a moment leans into the next,
that patterns remember and hold.
There is difference.
This and not-that.
Before and after.
Silence cut by sound.
Light etched against shadow.
There is perception.
something notices.
Otherwise,
the field sits quietly,
no grass, no sky.
There is coherence.
Things cling just long enough
to touch, to dance together,
to echo across the void.
There is relationship.
Nothing stands alone.
Even the solitary
leans on air,
presses against ground.
And there is trust.
that tomorrow will come,
that the ground will not
disappear mid-stride.
These are the first conditions,
the quiet bedrock
beneath the scaffolding
that allow the thing
to begin.