firebath
A voice once told me of my beloved.
It told me my final path was through relationship,
that transcendence or peril would be mine through some Other.
This declaration of coming union sent me nearly mad!
Propelled by flame and disbelief,
I barreled back into the fountain of prophecy.
All the while remembering that from my mother’s womb
there dawned a haunting glimpse of future love.
Years later I emerged from the waters of hell
with naked starfish in my hair, startled, but eerily bathed of conditioning.
The slow trod forward of putting fresh limbs back into gait
re-grew a teacher in the place where mind once heaved.
The emergence of victory over death came as life,
the invitation, the acceptance, the reacquaintance, and nothing more.
Simple, clear being, bereft of wayward voices and fidgeting inner fight,
the flight to nirvana wontedly an hourless breath away.
Basking in the plentitude of signs over vast ages,
detachment had brought me so fully to the precipice.
Meditation, my complete existence. Loving, my one action.
And wham! The Other stood there.
No sooner had I said “How could this be? It is impossible!
I am unutterably alone and whole in my aloneness.”
than you appeared.
How could it be that attachment was begging forgiveness for my misgiving?
Just when I had so contentedly painted over the scars of oracles past
with fearless living and relentless discovery?
I became dismayed at the thought of becoming whole again through love!
No sooner had I laid my soul down to the earth to cry,
than I looked up in rapture.
My veins turned to canals from which harbingers of union sprung tall.
Through meditation, I took a blade to them;
and they gushed forth a tsunami of paradisiacal creatures’ mindfood.
Parrots flew by on giant great waves, asteroids landed in my freckles,
lust in my lunchbox, and embodying this world a must.
I saw the future.
No sooner had I said “You have a magic in you that is only yours”
than I saw the very same magic was in me too.
The apocalypse of visions would not stop.
The avalanche images of completion shattered down on me
growing my heart organ into a universe.
You stood in the center of it; and I opened my arms to it all.
No sooner had I said “I am ready. Take me to my lover”
than I saw my own sex rising to meet you, then running ahead of me to the bay;
and there you were again in the curve of the shore, embracing my breaking body.
I saw galaxies of stars through the icy sea,
mountain peaks of vine-laden planets rise through my tea,
snow leopards bounding through strobing breakfasts.
Fire-capped treetops seared the pawpads of ecstatic lemurs
as they joined fingers with rings of rejoicing.
It turns out I had forgotten who I am.
To love had become the easy truth,
until love became a temporal reality.
How could I have known?
The ultimate kindling had just begun.
No sooner was I,
than you were too.
The firebath still yet to be.
Photograph by Tom Clark
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