Seeker Magazine - November 2004

AVANT SOUL

Rhapsodies in Words

to reawaken our fascination with the ever-original SOUL

A Resting Upon a Precipice

(Pole Vaults)

It's always evident
What is before us
At the precipice of decision.

Dilemmas are everywhere ~
It's a question of which one
You want to embrace

Or which one has you
In the python's grip. When a large snake

Or circumstance

Is suffocating you,
Get out a very sharp knife

Or make your understanding
As sharp as a razor

While you can still breathe.

Examining the gripping chaos
      and heartache of the globe,

There needs to be a return to the smaller,

Or we all lose intimacy. Each of us

Exerts the most effective power
      within our immediate sphere of influence.

It's personal.

While we cannot slay the nine-headed
      python uncoiling war weapons from his Republic,

We're able to remove pieces of dung
      or clutter stuck to our soles,
Tracked to daily paths we trek
      and undertake each day.

Are you tracking?

Cellular composites of creativity in disarray
Still await your [unpacking] orders.

And the climb?

Too easy to bemoan cocky monsters we can't topple
      as they unleash torrents of executive orders
           from their towers.

Each of us is overloaded
By ever-mushrooming peaks of delay,

And while review is overwhelmingly spectacular,
      it's a view riddled with dismay,
Neglecting immediate piles of housecleaning
      within your own kingdom.

Where's your spiritual Sierra Club?
Your guide to the inner mountain?

Here's your backpack of creativity. Fasten it.

The only genuine riddle concerns the degree of your fascination.

The Muse is not amused and is less kind
When your response is lagging;
Then She removes arcane maps of the journey
To leap to another precipice.

Life isn't about your arrested development:
Pole vaults are most difficult when enthusiasm is dragging!

In every Universe
There is disorder

There is chaos

There is a glop of fragmented froth.

I say to you, boy scout and girl scout,
Mountain goat or sloth,
Leader or follower,
Dismantler or bridger of reality,
Pip-squeak or avatar in training,

Your imperfect life cries out for a return
      to the perfected smaller

For the riddle of God's vastness
      & greatness
           is this:

Regret is endemic. There are few rewards for lateness!

And viewing mountains other than your own
      can become so endemic, so enlarged,

That you no longer can embrace
      & cuddle

The immediate living room of your own being. . .
(Where the finite & infinite are having a meeting.)

Why are you puzzled?

The riddle is that you are here

To become the mountain.
Re - Solution . . .

(Copyright 2004 by Darius Gottlieb. No reproduction without express permission from the author)

You're invited to visit Darius' website for more of his photographs and his music at Art Bliss

Letter to the Author at SoulGnosis@aol.com
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