Wax Poetickle

The Golden Sphinx and the Silver Phoenix
Copyright c 1983, c 1985 c 2006 by Evan Pritchard
All Rights Reserved
Print copy available from Resonance Communications
PO Box 1028 Woodstock NY 12498 $5 plus $1 P & H (212)714-7151


Part One
The Golden Sphinx
Copyright © 1983 by Evan Pritchard

There was in ancient days
A story of two lovers
A tale of how they met
A legend of their passion
And unlike other stories
There two were not rulers
King or Queen or even rich or powerful
But on their meeting day
When love began its slow and sputtering fire
Each were much too lowly for the other
Yet somehow as a salmon
Climbs the fall to find its nest
These two found a haven
In each other
And on some special nights
Shared stories rich in detail
Piling wealth on top of wealth
From stores of images within
As potentates swap kingdoms, jewels and woes
And deal them back again.
One such tale was called “The Golden Sphinx,”
Perhaps it bears repeating once again.

The dusk settled in upon the window sill
The intimate shadows grew
Until they enveloped the youthful lovers
Woven one about the other on the bedspread loom.
The sun had fallen quickly from the sky
And all of dark deep space rushed in like tide.

She held her Phoenix lover, vanguard of the sun,
Vanquisher of night
He blessed her in return with his caress,
For she was the summoner of the moon—
Its falconeress who caused that distant bird to rise
Shining on golden wings, reflecting in her
Great and Sphinx-like eyes.

The moon rose up again this night
Because of her enchantment
And it glorified the far-bespeckled sky,
The sphere of stars
She drew her lover close and held him near,
For at the darkest pole,
He was her constant morning sun.

She welcomed in the moonlit night,
For with it came the hour of magic,
Their secret time of power
In which the golden star of passion
Grew until it filled the room
With such a nectar, sweet-tasting honey light
And the incense of their desire
Glowed like amber-colored fire
On the private altar of their bed.

She lifted one precious eyelash
And looked upon her lover
Who had been laying so close beside her
Staring softly at her beauty
Now apprehended by her captivating eyes
And the moments he had stolen from her
Tender-blossomed innocence
He now, like stolen fruit
Had to share.

“Tell me a story,”
She said in her smallest mouth.
He smiled at her wisdom
For she always knew the perfect thing to say.
He took delight in the music-perfect timing
Of her heart’s sweet cadence
S it sang within his mind
And as it pulsed under his hand.
He took a fatherly pose
And awaited for the newborn story to arrive
For there were many joys to be described.
But there still remained an ancient lost apology
Long owed to her heart,
Which she herself forgot
And a single tale alone would have to find it
Freeing all his secret thoughts
Like blackbirds in the night.

“In ancient times…” the tale began,
“…there was a man whose heart had been starved
by neglect.
And now like a weakened flower, fell upon the earth
No longer with the strength to open.

He spent his lifetime looking for his mate
He even bought a ring for her,
A lifetime’s worldly savings
And he carried this ring with him
At the bottom of a deep coat pocket
As he moved restlessly from place to place.
Several had seen it, for he’d fallen deep in love
Offering it foolishly to them
But always it was much too big or much too small
Or did not suit their taste at all.
Always in the end,
His efforts were discouraged.
Finally, he made the decision to throw it out
Or give it to the perfect stranger
Or better, leave it in the square
To be picked over like a piece of trash
By local peasant women.

One day as he walked
He saw a pottery shop
Upon a row of junk trading establishments
A sign in noonday shadow spelled out
“Everything On Sale”
And he decided then that he would buy a jar or vase
Of clay, and he would place in it his precious ring
Along with all his love poems
And just bury it in the sand,
To allow some far and future person
Perhaps ten centuries hence,
To find the remains of his broken heart
And share his sorrow
And perhaps his tears.
He stepped into the shadows of the little shop
But the entire place was bought out
Right down to the tile on the floor.
No one was in sight.
He turned and stood in wistful contemplation
In the summery doorway
his face turned from the sun.

Suddenly he felt a presence
He turned to find the shopkeeper behind him.
An old and broad-faced man with caramel brown skin
Smooth, far-Eastern folds upon his brow
He wore a cape of dusty colored cloth
And a smile that the oldest children wear.
“What do you want?” the seeker said, surprised.
“What do YOU want?” the shopkeeper answered.
“Oh well, uh, I…wanted to buy a jar,
perhaps a vase.
I don’t know. I see I’ve come too late.”

“Yes, my little sale is over
Everyone has come and gone and taken from me
What is theirs to take
And now my floor is empty for the next clay to arrive
I don’t know when.”

“I…just wanted a jar,” the somber seeker sighed.
“Just a jar? Well then, I think that you are not too late.
If that is all you want,
You are a humble man and shall be happy!”

I have a jar for you, it’s in the back!”
And the old, unaging shop keeper returned
A moment later
From the curtain in the back, with a dusty little jar
“Something like a pot, you see, but nearly like a vase
With two small handles and a tightly shut lid.
No one wanted this one, I’m afraid.
Too bad…returned twice.. ‘wrong size,’ ‘too small’
‘Too big’….so I kept the thing myself.
But I tend to think this jar and you
Will get along fine
You both have so much in common!”
And he laughed and thrust it in the seeker’s hands.
“How much?”
“Take it, its yours.”
”Free?”

The old unaging man just smiled
And squeezedt he seeker’s forearm gently,
Turned and shuffled slowly
To the back of the room,
His two plodding sandals watched
By two careful eyes from the
Doorway to the world outside.
The curtain was drawn and the elder
With the two shining eyes
And the beaming face and simple robe
Was seen no more.

“Strange.”
“Very strange, but I got what I came for.
It will serve my needs just fine.”
And taking to his breast
This thin forlorn and kindred vessel
He returned to his home, placed his ring down on the table
Splayed his poems across the chair like a hand of cards
And by the candlelight began to wrestle with the
Tight-closed lid of the jar
But no amount of pulling could undo it.

After several days in which the lid remained fastened
After testing it and tapping it and twisting it,
Talking to it, then he cried out,
“Well, no wonder no one kept this God-forsaken jar,
It won’t open!
It’s just a worthless piece of junk!
I thought that it was free,
But it has cost me days of labor and frustration.
Small wonder that he gave it away,
Now I know the reason why.
He said it was just like me—
Why, it’s just a useless vessel
Like my heart, too old to open.
That is probably what he meant!”
And crying out, he brought the clay pot down
Against the hearth, and smashed the lid upon the earth.
“What have I done?” he cried aloud.
(“Not like myself…to lose control.”)
“I think the jar has opened me instead
Now to be forever open!”

He wept, and rising from his knees,
He blow out all the candles, saying,
“Yet again we are alike,
For like my heart, it can never be buried.”

He lowered his tired and delicate body to rest in bed
And immediately had a dream.
Even as the smoke from the candles filled his nostrils
In the darkness, the vision of a great sphinx-like woman
Rose before him
And instead of being sinister or angry
Her face was filled with tenderness.
Her breast was bared; her eyes;
Her huge and Sphinx-like eyes,
Glowed with compassion.
On a golden chain around her long Egyptian neck
There hung his ring, now shining gold
And in her hand, the poems;
Inscribed on bond and bound in gilded leather.

“I am the heart of a woman
you scorned long ago—
scorned because she was not
lovely enough for your eyes.
You barely remember her
She was frail and delicate
Soft-spoken woman,
A woman whose heart you once touched
And drew to yourself
Even in your cool refusal.

I will appear to you now and again
Until you recognize me as your equal
No longer deceived by my humble disguises!”

The vivid vision vanished,
And the seeker fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
When morning came, he rose up from the bed
Went back to the broken jar
And lifted it.
To his great amazement,
A parchment scroll fell out
Of the jar and tumbled upon the sharp,
Shattered clay puzzle below.
The trembling hand lifted slowly
And in the new
Light of the morning, unrolled
The most beautiful gold-inscribed scroll
That the physical eyes could behold.
He rushed to the table to stretch it out full
On the board
To examine it closely.
Immediately he became so absorbed and entranced
That he could not pull his eyes away.
It was clearly from ancient times,
Long before the earliest memories of any living soul.

The scroll was beautiful to see,
“Worth a fortune!” so he thought.
But also told a story,
And the story was as follows:

“In ancient days there was a man
whose heart had become hollowed
by success and wealth.
He had met with potentates and kings
He had climbed the rugged mountains of the north
Shared his verse with the greatest of poets
Played for the praise of the greatest musicians
Given advise to the greatest of artists
And he had explored the highest realities
Shared with the holiest saints
He had done business with the greatest
Of international traders,
Discovering much in his own global travels
And all of the secrets of each ancient ruin
He brought to the daylight were his secrets also.
He’d seen the people of many lands,
And solved many mysteries,
Won with long hours of scholarly study
And yet he was empty and couldn’t say why.
There was something much more important
Which he had not found
and that became the quest that obsessed his later life.
Nothing he had found was truly great
Just shrewd reworkings of the old and proven
Theories of the time.
He wanted evidence in hand
That some great soul had walked upon the earth
And had left his footprints in the dust
That lay before him.
But each promise, every signpost in the wilderness
Brought only temporary joy,
For he would soon
Uncover falsehood lurking, like a squirming face
Behind a great gold mask.
Eventually, he excavated one false
Wonder of the world too many
He forsook his worldly chattel;
Left it at an inn, they say;
And set forth into the desert
To become a solitary nomad
To meet no one, to see nothing
And become a name forgotten.

He traveled to the most inaccessible place
To live in isolation
Yet the hunger deep within could not be stifled.
He cried out to the deaf and heartless desert in despair.

And flung himself upon a dune
To be swallowed up
By ever-shifting sands.
He fell asleep for days and nights it seemed
And finally awakening
He saw the sand had cleared, to bare
The faint glimmer of gold beneath
The blowing desert dust.
Still, an archaeologist by nature
He began to clear by hand the drifts of sand away
From where the earth shone gold.
“It’s probably some common-place phenomenon
with which I’m not familiar,” he observed.
“Perhaps I’m better off just preserving my resources.
It is probably a tray of brass or such.
It’s not important.”

He sat and drew his thoughts within
And mused about his sorry state in life
Til boredom caused him to return
And solve the case at hand.
He began to dig away at the object, in order to lift it
Maybe sell it in a nearby town for food or goods,
Whatever was available.
But the more he dug, the more there was to dig.
It grew beneath his hands
Days by days…weeks by weeks turned into
Months and months,
And finally the structure was revealed.
There stood, freshly returned to the world
After many silent years in the belly
Of the great, restless desert
A monumental sphinx, gigantic in size,
And sculpted out of good solid gold.
“Whoever created this monument to life
must have been the greatest man known to his age.
Now I have the found the footprints I seek.
I have found pure inspiration!” he cried.
“This, this is greatness!”
Life became light again
Joy found its mark in his narrow heart.

The fortunate man, now delighted,
Began to dig further
And found deep within the dry sand
Inscribed on the side of a monolith gleaming,
A panoply of hieroglyphs!
He translated them as follows:

“I, THE PHARAOH OF ALL THIS LAND,
MARDUK, AM THE GREATEST OF PHARAOHS.

I HAVE COMMANDED MY ARMIES TO FIGHT
AND THEY HAVE BEEN VICTORS IN EVERY EARTHLY CORNER
I HAVE INSTRUCTED MY BUILDERS
MY ARCHITECTS, DRAFTSMEN,
CRAFTSMEN AND SCRIBES
IN THE WAYS OF OUR ANCESTORS,
ANCIENT AND WISE
AND HAVE WROUGHT THIS—
THE MIGHTIEST SPHINX!”

(Here, the digger was convinced he had located
The single most powerful man of the race
A Pharaoh unknown to history,
But whose greatness must have been legend.
He dug deeper and found a further inscription
Which disturbed him greatly.)

“I HAVE CREATED THIS MONUMENT
NOT OUT OF PRIDE, BUT IN SHAME,
IN HUMILITY
I DO THIS DEED TO BEG FORGIVENESS
THE ONLY WAY I KNOW HOW,
BY COMMANDING.
I BEG THE FORGIVENESS OF
ONE YOUNG GIRL
LOWLY AMONG OUR PEOPLE
TO YOU, OH CHLOE IS ALL OF THIS SENT;
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
IS ALL OF THIS MEANT.
MAY YOU SEE THIS CRUDE LIKENESS
THIS SPHINX
AND RETURNING TO ME
LIFT ME UP OFF MY KNEES
BEFORE I DIE KNEELING.”

(The seeker thought—
if this was the greatest man
who could he kneel before?
What woman could have accomplished a life
greater than he?
He dug further down.

“I HAVE MET WITH POTENTATES AND KINGS
I HAVE SCALED THE RUGGED MOUNTAINS
OF THE NORTH
I EXPLORED THE LOFTIEST REALITIES
WITH SAINTS.
EXPLORED THE ANCIENT RUINS
AS A SCHOLAR
STILL I FEEL MY STRENGTH
WAS SPENT IN VAIN.
I HAVE BECOME EMPTY IN THE CHASE
ALL I HUNTED WAS
A SINGLE SOUL OF STRENGTH
AND FOUND THERE NONE.
ONCE, WHILE ROAMING IN MY OWN KINGDOM
IN DISGUISE
I MET A COMMON WOMAN
AND ASKED THE GIRL HER NAME.
SHE SAID HER NAME WAS CHLOE,
AND I ANSWERED,
“WELL, DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?
I AM THE GREATEST IN ALL OF THIS LAND
I AM THE PHARAOH, THE LEGEND,
MARDUK.
I AM THE GREAT SOUL.
BEHOLD ME AND WONDER!
THINK YOURSELF FORTUNATE
THAT I REVEAL MYSELF
TO SUCH PLAIN EVERYDAY WOMEN AS YOU!”
THE YOUNG GIRL CALLED CHLOE
SAID NOTHING
BUT FLED THROUGH THE CROWD
WITH A LEONINE LEAP
DISAPPEARED IN THE THICK
NOONDAY CROWD.

I WAS SOON STRICKEN ILL
AND IN HEAVY DELERIUM
MET WITH A GREAT GOLDEN SPHINX
IT STOOD FOURSQUARE BEFORE ME
WITH THE POWER OF LIONS
AND THE GENTLE FIRE OF THAT WOMAN
IT PENETRATED ME
WITH ITS GREAT HUGE EYES
AND IT SPOKE WITH THE FORCE
OF AN ORACLE:
“I AM THE ONE YOU SCORN!
I AM THE ONE YOU SEND FLEEING
FROM YOUR KINGDOM!

YOU SOUGHT THE MEANING OF LIFE
IN SCROLLS
BUT NEVER SOUGHT GOD
THROUGH MY HEART.
YOU MAY SEARCH THE LAND
FOR YEARS
BUT YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME
IN YOUR KINGDOM.
I AM YOUR EQUAL
IN YET HIGHER KINGDOMS
MORE NOBLE THAN THIS SQUALID
PLAYGROUND THAT YOU RULE!
YOU WILL FIND ME THERE.
I WILL APPEAR TO YOU
TIME AND AGAIN
YET YOU MIGHT NEVER
RECOGNIZE ME!
BUT IN ALL OF THESE PLAIN
AND VARIOUS FORMS
I WILL STILL BE THE SOUL
THAT YOU SEE HERE NOW.
WHEN YOU HAVE ATTAINED
THE HUMILITY
VISION AND WISDOM
TO SEE BEYOND MY SIMPLE VEIL
DIRECTLY INTO MY PURE HEART
THEN YOU ARE READY TO FIND
THE SUPREME ONE
WHO HAS LEFT FOR YOU
ITS SCENT THERE
THAT YOU MIGHT BECOME
ITS HUNTER
THEN YOU WILL HOUND
ITS BLOOD-SCENT
TIL THE END OF TIME
THEN ONLY WILL YOU KNOW
THE PURE MEANING OF LIFE AND OF LOVE
AND BE HAPPY!”

THESE WERE THE WORDS
THE GOLDEN SPHINX SAID.
AFTER A TIME I RECOVERED FROM ILLNESS
AND BUILT THE INADEQUATE
TOKEN OF LOVE
THAT YOU SEE HERE BEFORE YOU.
BUT WHEN I LOOK HERE
UPON HER LIKENESS SET IN GOLD
I FEEL THAT GOD WILL HEAR
MY LONGING HEART
AND SMILE.”

“Did he ever find her”
she asked.
“Often.
Through life after life, he found her,
Sometimes appearing within as the Sphinx,
Sometimes as a plain, unadorned woman
Sometimes passing her by,
Sometimes sharing her life,
Often without recognition.”

“Did the archaeologist find her too?”
she asked.
“No, but the man with the broken jar found her!
He made her his wife.
Together they lived a harmonious, long
Songful measure of life
A tale full of blessings
And eloquent lessons
Of love, enchantment, and joy!”

“Did you find her?” (she smiled)

“Yes.”
”Like the tip of some great Sphinx
buried in the sand, or
like a jar which I could not find the way to open,
or, like an unassuming girl
who holds a mythical identity within.
But
I found her, Chloe,
And I love her with all my heart!”

With all the words having taken their course
And the night having fallen in full
He gently removed every veil from her heart
Moved, strong and slow
Like a creature of the night
And fell upon her as his mate,
The tender sweet figure reclining in shadows
Embracing his whole being with her gaze.
And tossing aside the drifts of cloth like sand
In the wind
He moved
To touch the Golden Sphinx of her pure heart.

May 17, 1983


Part Two
The Silver Phoenix
Copyright ©1985 by Evan Pritchard

She looked at him with eyes like shiny pennies
Puzzled at his dark and shadowed thoughts
And wondered why he seemed so somber sometimes
Yet so sunny other times.
He said,
“Love me as I am today and I shall come to be
far greater than the greatest past,
shining on you like the springtime sun
rising from the old November snow
And sweeping away the ashes of the winter-tide
With the broom of some tomorrow’s
Apple blossom branch.
Love me, and allow me to surrender
To the force we call death
So I can once again repeat the ancient ritual
Of conquering the darkness in the mind
And in my struggle
Cause aurora borealisese and burning sunsets to arise
That provide a guiding light for those who might
Encounter such a death at such a future time.

Love me as you think that I shall be,
And you are chasing phantoms,
Things that don’t exist, like whisps of Elmo’s fire
Ever shining on the blue horizon
The future is a fourth dimension P.O. Box
Where we deposit secret unmarked packages and dreams
And reams and reams of yet unwritten letters.
Some attempt addressing questions that our visions
Left behind
Dreams have no address at all sometimes
And are returned to us for our revision.

Love me as I used to be and I shall lose my
Whole direction.
I shall unwind slow
And lose control and will untie just like a sail
That’s lost its hold upon the wind.
Love me only as I was,
And love will cease to be a lamp unto my feet
And shall instead become a blindfold to my eyes.

Do not cling unto my past or be attached
to that which melts within the grasp
For I as soul am only that which is.

“How could I ever possess a thing that comes
and goes and changes shape,
then vanishes again?”

He answered,
“A greater object may possess a smaller,
and a smaller object may possess a greater thing
But when two objects see themselves as equal
How can they but share that which they are?
With none belonging to the other.
They are sets of equal size;
They are spheres that overlap.
Where we intersect is the boundary
Of our knowledge of each other
The border of our map.
And HOW we overlap
Is the measure of the quality of love that we have found.
Let us push the boundaries back
And also work upon the quality we find
Between the changing moving lines
Where shades of meaning now abound
The I in you, the you in me
The passion and the alchemy that happens
When these widening circles insect!

“How do we develop these, the untranslated
qualities of meaning that we find
between the outlines of our lives?”

He said, “Study all the darknesses
Touch them with the brush of your devotion
Color in the spaces with a child’s eye for beauty
Rhythm, taste, or texture,
All that which appeals to you.”

“How can we expand the land and move
the lines
around the land that lies
where both our hearts can understand?”

He said,
“When we reveal the deepness of the secret space,
the feeling place that wells within our being,
Face to face, good or bad, great or small,
Then we expand the borders of the land
That lies where both can share and understand!”

“Tell me just one secret of your heart,
my love,
So I can move the borderlines,
The bounds that bind the land we share
And I can find the entrance to your heart.”

“Ask.”

“Who are you that comes and goes
and grows and bursts
and dies like some enchanted flower,
or the sun?”

He paused and thought for a moment,
“I am the Phoenix!” he whispered at last
“I am the bird of fire
and a symbol of desire
I am the Phoenix!”

“I am the one who must challenge the sun
Like a latter-day Deadalus
Lifted by feathers and tethers and wax
Drawn by a force that temps me
Towards a spiraling course,
Like a Phoenix flying
To the source of all life
And of light, and of height
And of falling and danger and dying!
I fall and I sink
And I rise like a moth of the Eastern skies
That returns to the ring of God’s flame
For another burning bout with death.
Unto my dying breath I am the Phoenix!
“But why must you
continue this ravishing path?”
she asked.
“Why worship this fickle and flickering
God of fire
This furnace that purifies soul’s desire
This lime-kiln that spews you
Out from his mouth
That burns you until you are molten hot
Or spurns you because you are cold as clay…
Or worse…lukewarm!
Why do you go through with it?
The path of peace is bright and long
It soothes you with a quiet song
All life falls neatly into place
And benefits the human race.

You chant the formula to find
The quiet place, the empty place
Within the mind.
And when you find this patch
Of still-uncluttered mind,
It tends to cleanse the heart
It mends the spirit, soothes the soul
Gives you hope, makes you whole,
And brings you ever closer towards the goal,
Perfection.”

“Yes, everything that you have told me is true—
the ancient of Greece and the sages of Asia agree.
But ever closer to the goal is not enough for me.
For ever closer means that you are never ever reaching it.
That is mental exercise,
Like multiplying fractions to reach zero.
Zero is eternal, it’s the omnipresent number,
A circle holding everything, yet nothing.
And yet this point can never be attained
No matter how intelligent the brain,
By multiplying and dividing fractions.
It is this present point in time in which I live,
And God is here,
And now and then I take the route
That goes directly to Its heart
Something like a blustering boy in love
Who wastes no time in flustering and
“Asking ‘round” about her name,
But boldly asks her for the dance.
The names can come later!
The tune leaves no time for lengthy discussion.
This life for me is of transition from perdition
To combustion
And sometimes back again
In case I missed a sin.

Perfection is for saints and mathematicians,
And I am not a plaster or of chalk.
I am a thing that lives!
Let them be praised for their pretty perfection.
I’d rather be soiled by the stigma of growth!

There is beauty in the flame into which I retire
And truly no shame in the failure to which I aspire.

I too must seek for that uncluttered place in the mind
But it is like shuffling mountains of papers around
To clear a good spot on the writing-desk surface of time.

To inscribe with my quill on an eloquent slip
Of the tongue
And add to the mountain of indispensable trash.
If I were to truly create such a quiet place
I would have the whole pile
Tossed into the fireplace
Including the table
And maybe the chair,
It may seem unfair, but
Heaven’s gates open to any who dare!”

“I concede a certain method to your martyrdom
You never really fall to father death,
But walk with him unfaltering
As you approach your funeral pyre
Of purification.
But somehow you escape,
The rainclouds break, a pardon comes
And always at the final step you take
You find some liberation and you dance,
Like mother life,
A tantric tarantella on the
Way back down the stairs.”

“Yes, I am the Phoenix,” he said.
“I’m the silver bird of fire, and a symbol of desire.
A rain of shimmering quicksilver
Pours down upon the earth
At the very moment I expire
And in that Perseus shower of light
All life gives birth!”

“It makes for quite a diary, I guess,
but I am not entirely impressed.
This constant transmutation,
Transfiguration is…
Immature.
It makes one undependable and also
Inconsistent.
Like a drunkard with his drinking
You feel lucky with your thinking
And you jump to wild conclusions.
With your heels two feet above the ground
In leaping levitation
You are not a ballet dancer,
You’re a child risking stunts upon a swing.”

“So that’s it! You fear that I might die of youthfulness?
If half the population of the world is made
of youthful fools
The other half must be a room of teetering antiquities,
Fearful of the floor.
Well, if I must tip my glass to one group or the other,
I’ll choose youth.
It’s much more difficult to celebrate old age.
Of course I concede
There must be a fulcrum someplace
Between these two extremes.
But while I’m looking for this balance,
I must keep my equilibrium.
I’ll either spin off into space
Or a greater danger, become stagnant if it’s lost
If in all my swinging I can generate
The power that creates
Like an alternator changing
From the negative
To positive and back again
And thereby to empower a Light to shine
Or Wheel to turn,
Then why is this so frightening?”

“It is not a frightening thing at all,
as long as you’re keeping your balance.
But you forget who gets to be the fulcrum,
And who has to keep the balance
And the equilibrium,
While you’re seeking it yourself.
It is I,
The Golden Sphinx, with my two feet on the ground
Haunches anchored
In the sand, and my head above water!
It is I
Who is the axis for the Wheel and for your reeling
And the lamp post for your Light
And for your drunkenness with God.
As you dance your whirling dervish
It is I who clears the furniture
And steers you clear of walls.
If it were not for me
You’d not have danced at all.
Like a horse upon a rein
I plot your course
And see you’re bridle-trained
And hold you taut
Until I’m sure that no steps are forgotten.”

“Is it that you want to hold my flight?
Imprison and control my flight to only that
Which can be plotted on a course?
Is that what you would call maturity?”

“If it were maturity
that ranked my highest virtue,
I would not have chosen
Such a firey horse to ride.
It’s only while you counter me
With everything that’s you
That you keep me from
A life too safe to bear.
I need your heat to wake in me
The fire that sleeps within
Just as I keep you from burning up
At once.”

“And why must I be kept from burning
why must I be cooled?
To reach the sun
It takes a Phoenix six or seven hundred years.
And if I ever reached the sun,
I’d only die
And be transformed to ashes:
The earthy dust from which I’d rise
To live another several hundred years.

Defying death, my spreading shadow
Sweeping across the earth
Until all ashes everywhere had disappeared.
Is it something that you envy?
Is it something that you fear?”

“It’s only that I’m jealous
when you try to dance with death.
It seduces all your thoughts
Away from mine
The fire in you throws itself
In every stream
That seems to lead to God.
You disappear in deep dark thoughts
‘to get to the bottom of this’
But what becomes of me
Until you’ve thrashed it out?
And what becomes of me if water wins?”

“It helps to understand
that there is just one element involved
I am both the earth and water
I’m the fire and the sea
The struggle that you see is the fundamental effort
Of the universe to try to re-emerge back into me…
After splitting into myriad dualities.
And in your different way,
And beneath a different stream,
You do the same,
At least symbolically, I mean!”

“My understanding now has become
greater than my fear
And my love will always pass my understanding.
I hope you find this fulcrum,
Or this axis that you seek
For when you swing to left or right,
You pull my heart along.”

“I suppose that you are right,
I’ve been a bit too rash
And too much in a hurry to enjoy the subtle things
That life eventually brings.
There is a certain complimentarity
A valuable quality
A passion and an alchemy
I melt the one who tempers me
We have a wealth of checks
And balances
That somehow have gone unaccounted for til now
And even when our separate ledgers don’t agree
We add to one another…spiritually!”

“There will always be these differences
between attracted people
and always an attraction
between two unlike spheres.
We are sets of equal size…”

“We are spheres that overlap.
And where we intersect
Is the boundary
Of our knowledge of each other.”

”The I in you, the you in me
The passion and the alchemy
That happens when these widening,
Unlike circles insect!”