Thursday, September 22, 2005

Cannonical Utterances













A numinous kindling
is rarely solacing or graceful -
it is a marauder galloping
with guns brandished,
stampeding across familiar territories;
frightening the indigenes as they
flee to the safety of their huts.
Only to be driven out by
the flames of the cleansing -
wreathes of smoke drifting
across the range.

It’s not as if the movement
is a steady advance like
a river journeying toward the ocean -
the soul meanders and gets lost
in its own ruminations,
traveling into forgotten tributaries,
against the flow.
The heart’s flare constantly
calls it back to the threshold,
only to be catapulted into another crisis
by an unwitting device.

The ground traversed
sprawls behind, and is lost.
In the map room, the scouts
look for a new station to claim -
inside or out. A worn veneer
cloaks a struggling beam seeking
only its culmination. The moment
of severity passes and
the voice is cleared.

The bird is freed from its cage.
It circles thrice and surges upward -
on a docile air rising.
It will not pass this way again.


© 2000 Melissa Songer

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