Ending And Beginning

  
   Last week's posting marked the final entry of a 35-week series, during which I wrote prose meditations that were each inspired by a line from a poem I'd previously written--either in 2009 or early 2010. It was challenging but rewarding to explore, in a more philosophical spirit, some of the wider implications of the poems' allusive utterances, and then to combine both with related original artwork and selected quotations. I had fun and learned a lot. I hope you did too.

      I've created many other poems and drawings however--some very recently, others across the years. So I'm going to make selections from among these and post them each week, as the Spirit moves, adding any comments which may seem relevant and helpful. Along those lines, here's a poem I wrote in May about spiritual balance:


                       TRUE LINE

landing at the perfect angle of approach
       you can hold onto your sanity without
          exploding in a spectacular fireball

impeccable balance is everything
one fear to the left    one rage to the right
                      you're cooked

finding the true line       a pure trajectory
that's the ticket!
        what can derange you then?

I spent many lifetimes figuring this out
crashing     burning     crashing     burning
                over and over

but now I've got it
    heart light       mind clear
          hands barely touching the controls

                            *


     The following drawing and poem are companion pieces, both part of a book I wrote in 1996-97 titled The Sacred Well: Songs From The Waters Of Life. Although usually a poem is inspired by an artwork (a literary practice called "ekphrasis"), in this instance the reverse is true--the poem came first, then the artistic vision inspired by it.

THE LABYRINTH

Amazing, isn't it? To be a woman, a man.

What does it mean? I'm born to love

what dies; born to die myself; born

all hunched up like a question mark.

But who inside me keeps asking? Who

cannot rest? Don't you sense it? Beyond

this dying animal, a deeper life begins!

Listen, I'm blundering around, same as you.

Every day I start off into the Labyrinth,

always a novice, groping this way and that,

straining to grasp the riddle of my soul.

And each night, wearily, I crawl into bed,

slanting downward through the Great Dark,

small as a raindrop, immense as a storm.

 *