Meridians (Vocal Mix)

At three thousand feet
The night was placid and clear
The stillness unbroken
Upon a vast carpet of nautical miles
With light air streams
The troposphere rippled
Enfolding me within its cool nitrogen arms

Looking below I saw
Hills and valleys
Fields and lakes
Extending out towards the skyline
Glancing above, I saw
A resplendent planetarium of stars
Against a fathomless vertical void
Whose immensity seemed to expunge
The nanoscopic awareness
That was myself

Levitating lower
I absorbed sounds from the terrain
Cricket, mole, fox and owl
Peeped and crooned their refrain
From pasture and branch
Soaring over a hay meadow
I skirted a cloud of bats, bathing in the compression
Of their larynx-ultrasound
As it wrinkled the air

Climbing at Mach velocities
I found myself in the mesopause
Staring down at the curvature of the horizon
Here, at the fringe of space
Orbiting the zenith between night and day
I detected sounds of a different type
Sounds that leaked off the planet
Sounds from super-cities and small townships

Hissed curses and soothing assurances:
7.2 billion tongues gesticulating
In horror, elation and surrender
Grappling with the pronouncement
Of being alive
Speaking to each other
To themselves
To the immeasurable abyss
Through which they hurled

Overcome with empathy
A thought suddenly struck me:
How did I arrive here
Upon the edge of the world?
What has become of my body?
Have I died?
Is this an afterlife?
Or was I ever really born?
How can I see and hear without eyes and ears
Feel and think without a brain?
It must be that I am only dreaming
And is this moment
Suspended above this exquisite orb