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The Light-Potters
When I into my heart-soul peer, As though into a pool of lucid Silence I see: a depth too clear To measure, yet within it unseen Currents urge: a hidden drift, Pervasions of an imminence. My being then is only thus: The body of my mind no thicker than White light bright through clear crystal; And through and through and through I gaze, Discerning no demons or darkness Or mazing walls at all to clutter The simplicity of my seeing. I stand upon a mountain peak, Surveying a hundred miles around Through air as pure and bright and chill As a tripping mountain brook Frolicking down from the snows to the seas. (The place I stand is but another vantage Like a dozen other points I see Convened around about, resplendent all In an august cloud-mantled majesty.) This whale I ride's a crystal beast Whose blood and bone are light itself, Whose heart is as the morning sun Within her glowing body's orbit, Whose mind is as the galaxies Sprinkled through the winter's night. Whose thoughts are as the shimmering Showers of light reflecting from A rippling lake. Upon this mighty power of mind I sail the seas of being down — A pebble on a glacier's back, But by it made its lifted eye, The pyramid's prime focus, The watch upon the main top mast, The toll of the cathedral's bell That carries through the countryside: And every ear and house and garden I strike I touch with gentleness, And every hill or wood or stream I sound I stroke as softly as A fragrant echo: And on from each to every other Thus re-echo me, a sense of sound Re-animate through all the life Of all this land I course, as gleeful And as giddy as a meadowlark, As sprightly as a butterfly, As sure and yielding as a breeze, As warm and loving as a blanket Of pure-laid light. I am the willows and the pines, The oaks and the apple-trees, Who in our wind-tickled leaves Embrace the light of being and Conduct it willingly into The earth — this large and lucent earth — This wonderworld — this magical Mother of music, women, and gods, Of men and gnats and daffodils. I am this pane of crystalline, As clear as a cat's green eye, Through which what's more than it beholds Beholds the dance kaleidoscopic Of light upon the body of being. And all that we are and all we can be Are lenses of light, fluid diamonds, As chance as dewdrops, a delicate Dance of the glassblower's arts: Of dragons and dolphins and wizards And swans — a tribal triumph of torches And totems about the broad head Of a pin. And as we think else, So shape we the colors and kinds Of our various beams. Potters of light, we turn our wheels: Waltzing waves of fluid form Refracting down into the depths The shining stuff of boundless being. |