IMAGINAL LIGHT                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

 

‘Light takes the tree but who can tell us how?”—Theodore Roethke

 

When imaginal light FLOODS the mind receptive

 

becomes a Bosporus where a freighter plows

eastwards steaming like an insomniac’s tortured

evening and a robust swimmer blue-skinned pounds

 

her warrior’s arms through cold clear waters swirling

towards her lover waiting on the Asian shore

perched upon a Vespa sputtering contentment----

 

AND, and only AND----when the humble breathing body staggers

sprints with its moles, fatigue, scars and scabs

 

what occurs takes our babbled breath away

EARTHQUAKES  us to another kind of earth

where caterpillar oozes into a lone imaginal cell,

old testament for the good news’ butterfly….

 

then we’re plunged

3,000 feet beneath this ground

                 

                BOISTEROUS and BEWILDERED

 

all the way from last century's insane wars those years

of bloodshed bombed out Dresden Guernica Nagasaki,

Dachau's cattle cars of clustered skeletons, China’s

perfumed slavery days king opium on his dirty throne

 

from the cloistered monks of Benedict to the MASTERS

OF THE GOLDEN WAY and far far beyond….

 

ahh, when imaginal light FLOODS the mind receptive