Essential Elements
/The Ancients named
Four essential elements:
Earth
Air
Fire
Water
Believing these substances
To comprise all known living existence
Later observers recognized
That these four elements did not account
For certain aspects of the human condition
And so named four “humors”
Controlling the functioning of the human body:
Blood
Yellow Bile
Black Bile
Phlegm
Still later scientists came to learn
Of other essential elements
Cells that make up plant and animal life
Atoms and molecules which constitute all matter
While others reflected on
Even more elemental particles
Protons
Neutrons
Electrons
Photons
And still others examined
The vast emptiness between all the known structures in the Universe
The forces by which those structures interact
And even “anti-matter” and “dark stuff” to account
for presences and interactions which could not otherwise be reconciled
Each of these constructs
Sought to explain physical being
What observers could lay hands upon
See with their own eyes
Or deduce from logic and reason
As necessarily existing
Yet none of these concepts
Of essential elements
Accounted for the defining character
Of humanity:
That spark we call “life”
That awareness we call “sentience”
That reasoning we call “intellect”
That immortality we call the “soul”
And though the physical elements
Earth, Air, Fire, Water
Humors, Cells, Atoms
Anti-matter, emptiness
May be necessary to “being”
And to our corporeal existence
It is the more ethereal elements
Life
Sentience
Intellect
Soul
Which are necessary to “living”
To the emotions we summon
The memories we build and retain
The legacy we impart at our passing
The interconnectedness we share with all things
And thus
They are truly
The essential elements
Of who and what we each
and collectively
Are
By Mike Turner
From: United States
Website: http://www.MikeTurnerSongwriter.com
Twitter: SchoonerSkipper
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