Click on the Play Button below to hear a reading of this poem.
It was Whitehead who was the first to show
How all actualities come and go,
In bursts first of presence, then of absence,
In fast fleeting moments of concrescence.
It is said that concrescence occurs all at once;
This is bewildering, and not only for a dunce.
Genetic analysis can divide it into phases
With little muddle when intellect blazes,
And, of this species, we can then track
The outcome to its origin, all the way back.
A concrescence begins by conforming to the past,
Then prepares, a presentation, that will only last
As a contribution that, to the future, will be passed.
We can say that concrescence
Is beautiful in formal essence,
And then also say that it’s true
There’s beauty in actuality, too.
A concrescence in action is a veritable whiz:
It causes what isn’t to become what actually is.
It takes all the king’s horses
And, yes, all the king’s men,
To put an actual entity together,
Again, and again, and again.
In creative advances that are
A gain, and a gain, and a gain.
In essence,
An actual entity is
Concrescence;
That’s what actual entities do,
Concresce
Into actualities and the ever new.
And so there you have it, and a cause for high jubilation:
Concrescence is enshrined in each instance of all creation,
And creation yearns for zest and everlasting exhilaration.