So sense exceeds all metaphor.
– Wallace Stevens, “Bouquet of Roses in Sunlight”
I am no shaman or prophet but
as a priest of an unpopular religion I
have come to the mountaintop to
practice with two or three acolytes what
passes in these latter days for
magic: embracing
the everyday the
miraculous ordinary.
I have no answers for truth seekers
only a few tools and permission to dig deep and
travel wide in the capacious
realms where no parents or teachers have
ventured and no preachers dare spread
their wings because here
sacred and profane merge in the
clear air of the real.
Some prefer the art of the caves of
the Cumberland Plateau where the twilit gods of the
underworld flit with the painted
bats and birds below, but I am one of
those old birds who nest in the stones
on high where the bluffs are
carved with lichened images that
can’t be named or tamed.
Richard’s poem gives us the sacred and the profane in a shimmering collage. The “old birds” who nest in stones where bluffs “are carved with lichened images that can’t /be named or tamed.” WOW!!! Takes my breath away. Radiant work. A wry title, too!
Thanks, Mary Alice. The original title was the rather plain “Mission Statement.” The more explanatory title turned it into more of a dramatic monologue spoken by a character so that it did not seem like the poet’s mission statement. My Zen teacher was also an old bird, and so the seasons turn.
Dear Richard,
I especially appreciated these lines in your poem:
here sacred and profane merge in the clear air of the real.
Isn’t this the true path of any spiritual practice!
Thanks, Marijo. I think this is indeed, as you say, the true path of any spiritual practice. Or any poetic practice, for that matter, which is one form of spiritual practice, isn’t it.