At Epiphany, a poem is the key

My first dream at Epiphany, the day of “showing forth”, for Christians the “theophany”, when the nature of God in Christ is revealed:

The Poem is the Key

I am in front of a screen that is a control panel. My task is to link various rectangular shapes. They are the size and shape of cards. I can click and drag them across the screen, and chart lines of connection between them. If I hit upon the right sequences, I will make magic, changing things in the world as well as on the screen.
     One of these rectangles contains a poem. If I lay my palm on the poem, everything goes right. All else is secondary. The poem is the trump, the master key. I am very happy because I have the poem. The rest will fall where it needs to be.

I rise from this dream charged with excitement, not least because I have already written the poem. 

The Speaking Land

Everything is speaking to you.
The tarot Fool is out of the deck
and walking up the drive
with the patterns of the world in his sack
to remind you (if you’ll listen)
that to be wise you may need to be crazy
in the eyes of others, but don’t confuse this
with behaving like a bloody fool.

The chickens in the yard can teach you
multiplication and what you need
to hatch that dragon's eggs you have inside.
Hawk will come over, more interested in you
than a chicken dinner. Are you ready
so soar on his wings, and claim his vision
and see your life roads from his sky?

Everything is conspiring to show you
what heaven and earth want to happen.
When you think your way is lost,
when there are mountains of glass
and concrete between you and your dreams,
the ones who move beyond the curtain
of our consensual hallucinations
and speak as the wind in the trees
as the call of a bird, as the bark of a fox
will open ways where you least expect them.
All you need are new ears and fresh eyes.

Morning star photo

The Return Journey

In the journey of the hero (or heroine) of a thousand faces, the homecoming is often the most difficult passage. A large part of the Odyssey is devoted to the trials and battles of the hero after he makes it back to his homeland. I wrote a poem about this at the end of leading a deep adventure into soul recovery and soul remembering:

The Return Journey

You found the courage
to turn on the tiger who pursued you
to fight with him hand to claw
to be swallowed and spat out
and to win through your losing
reforged in a shining body
worthy now to take his heart
and call him as your unswerving ally.
It is not enough.

Out of your yearning
you danced into worlds of enchantment
you drank from the breasts of the Goddess
where kisses flower into hyacinths
caresses stream into rivers of milk
every nerve ending is a partner in love
and hearts are never broken.
You discovered that dreaming is magic.
But it’s not enough.

As a confident traveler, you learned
to shrug off your bodyshirt
and ride the World Tree
as your private elevator
to soar through the face of the moon
dance with the Bear among the stars
to enter the sun behind the sun
and fly on wings of paradise over a fresh world.
You’re out there, but it’s not enough

Out of your calling
you braved the gates of the Underworld
and crossed the borderless river on your heartbeat
and tricked the Dark Angel in his own realm.
When you stood, defeated, before the impregnable walls
of Death itself, you raised a song from your heart and belly
that called help from the highest heaven
to pluck a soul from the cold recreation yard
where nobody plays new games.
But you must make the return journey.

The way back is full of diversions.
Some will detain you with pink kisses;
some will drag on you as drowning men
You’ll find the markers have been moved, or stolen.
Maybe you’ll have gone so deep, or so high
you can’t remember which world you left your body in.
Or you’ll rebel against returning to a world
where hearts are broken, and the earth defiled.
You will return. This is your soul’s agreement.

Now you have danced with the Bear
you will bring healing to the world of pain.
Now you have traveled the roads of soul
you will help the soul-lost to bring their children home.
Now you have flown as Apollo on a shining arrow
you will bring light into the shadow world.
Now you know the gates and paths of the Real World
you will make bridges for others.
You will bring it all home.

Returning, you will remember your mission:
To serve the soul’s remembering;
to go among people as dream ambassador
opening ways for soul to be heard and honored.
Let the world be your playground, not your prison.
Starchild ,plunge with delight into the warm, loamy Earth,
Renew the marriage of Earth and Sky,
Follow your heart-light, dance your dreams,
Commit poetry every day, in every way.
Now you are home.

Odysseus and Calypso by Arnold Bocklin

The bridge

I am the bridge between the tame land and the wild.
I was made by your hands but I am
the making and unmaking of your kind.

If you fear the crossing I narrow and heave..
If you seek to avoid what is on the other side
I will meet you halfway, in the form you most fear.

- Great Hollow CT, July 25, 2010

Proteus

Proteus

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I am in many forms before I am bound.

I am the starwalker who won't come down.

I am the pond dweller who won't come up.

I am a hawk on a hill.

I am a bear in a berry wood.

I am the giant of the deep

who walked the Earth for ten thousand years

before he went back to the sea.

I am the sleeping king

who mated with the Earth

and dropped his horns in due season

and grew them back

I am the blasted oak that drew the lightning

I am the man in the Moon

I am the Hanged Man, and the Emperor, and the Fool.

I am medicine and I am poison.

I am the springing tiger and the quaking goat.

I am the one who makes a prison of the world

I am the one who makes the world his playground.

I am the death lord on his dark throne

I am a humming bird courting a flower.

I am the heaven bird in the World Tree

and the dragon coiled at its roots

and the squirrel that makes mischief between them.

I am a shard from a mirror

that was broken in transit from a blue star.

To release me, you must tie me down.

- Portland, Oregon, December 6, 2009

The Angel That Troubles the Waters

I have seen you as a purple bruise in a yellow sky,
as a Scottish soldier with drawn sword
at the edge of the tame land and the wild wood,
as a snowy owl with fierce talons and fiercer eyes
as a Hindu death-lord traveling abroad
in a Johnny Cash outfit, swinging a lasso.

I have felt you enter as a gentle breeze
stirring the curtains in a hospital room,
and in the raw, thrusting horse-power
of the dark lord bursting into the maiden meadow.

You are a sexy devil.
I love you better than your brother Sleep.
Through aching nights of absence
I have longed for your embrace.

I have run your errands,
speaking in your voice to the old golfer on the plane,
negotiating with your razor-sharp precision
the terms for a possible life extension.
I have taken ailing humans by the hand
to your deep pools, to find you – if they dare –
in the troubling of the waters.

Few can look into your black sun
but those who do are different.
To know you, to walk with you,
to feel you always at the left shoulder
brings courage and October light.

You love to dress for occasions.
I have encountered you as a dandy in evening dress,
as a red Irish big-bellied god, and an Indian flame,
and a white lady whose footsteps are frost.
Your image is rarely in public places
though the medieval mind, like the mind of Mexico,
puts skeletal reminders of you at every turning,
mocking the vanities of the world.

On our wedding day
I want you to reach down from the sky in your robe of stars
and catch me in your voluptuous embrace
as we leave my old garment in the blanket of earth.
But if you choose not to come in your goddess form
I want you to be wearing my face.

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Note: The graphic is a rare image of Serapis, a lord of death and of healing. In The Secret History of Dreaming I explore the evidence that Serapis was the original "Angel That Troubles the Waters" at the healing pool of Bethesda.

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On this theme: I am leading "Making Death Your Ally" one of my most powerful workshops, at Mystic, Connecticut on October 24-25.

The Art of Heronry

I am studying the art of heronry.

You are a master of patience.
You can wait on one leg,
A spearman poised and immobile,
Longer than I can wait on two (or three).
Your standing stillness cons the fish
Into disregarding you, as a dead branch
Or a boring relic from an old shipwreck.

You don’t need anyone to tell you
When the time is GO.
In that instant, you strike without delay,
Your purpose straight and swift and clean
As a stabbing spear, taking your prey.

I am relieved that even you
Have to work to get airborne,
Flapping and beating your great gray-blue wings.
When you are up, and stretch out your body,
You exhibit the whole history of flight.
You show yourself as the Feathered Serpent,
The one that grew wise enough
To make a home in another dimension.

I love the way you practice love.
You put on a gaudy show for your intended
Sprouting twin mating plumes.
When your gallantry prospers,
You are willing to work in intimate partnership.
I have seen you, ferrying twigs in your beak
To your mate in the frame of your nest in the trees.

High-flying bird of the heart,
I like your business arrangement
With the busy engineer of canals and dams;
Where the beaver builds, you build too.

Humans, who fly only in dreams and machines,
Know you as an ancient ally and exemplar.
You brought First Woman from the Earth in the Sky
Breaking her fall on wings spread like magic carpets
To dance a new Earth into being.

Egypt knows you, and the mystery of your rise
From the sexy serpent of Earth
To the master of air and of water.
Egypt calls you the ever living, the phoenix bird
Born again and again from the ashes of the old life,
Endlessly birthing your winged and shining self.


photo by Chris Harshaw