The One - Third Movement: Remembering - Song 13: A Mind Undarkened - Segment II

THIRD MOVEMENT

 REMEMBERING

SONG THIRTEEN

A MIND UNDARKENED

 

II

I trot alongside a narrow dirt road

Naked footfalls from behind

carry a huge black wolf to my side

We lope on together heating breath to fuel our tracks

His body is misshapen. His shoulders too big for his back

and he wears a collar with no buckle or catch

His eyes are deep hiddenite fires

that match my own gray-green eyes

The agony of the hunt is in him and he wants my life

yet he holds back and stokes his stalker eyes --

wet fires of hunger, desire and need.

Now he bends his body to make his leap

and I let go a song – a lullaby I keep

hidden in my deepest sounds.

He falls back to running at my side

his hunger is my own – unsated, denied.

 

 

 

            I wake ravenous and sweating

            The old One sits upright dozing

            Smoke from an embered fire

            snakes slowly out the cavemouth

            I have crossed into new territory

                        and I struggle to hold the shape of it

            “If only I can hold this and live accordingly,

              I will be happy,” I think to myself.

 

                                    The old One looks my way and shakes his head

 

            “What do you mean, ‘no,’!” I shout

                        My head pounds under the hammer of my own noise

 

                                    “You cannot hold it,” he says softly

                                    “It is not yours to hold.”

 

            “Then what is to be done? Where else can I go?”

 

                                    His eyes mist as he says,

                                    “Cross over with them when you can.

                                      They know the way to the next gate

                                                near the sun, across this sand

 

            “If this is so, I must go now,” I say

            “This hunger will devour me before I find the way

              So I ask you, help me cross again so I can run with them.”

 

                                    A raised hand stops my words

                                    “You cannot go forward until you name 

            where you have been.”

            

            At first I think of youthfully imagined destiny

followed by the sound of waves, the endless sea

            Surely, these things speak to the deepening in me

            Now, cities, lovers, labors pass my eyes

                        but these come encrusted with ordinary lies

            I search my journeys for any sign

                        of a name to give this life of mine

                        and after many hours I begin to see

                        and when I look I see                 nobody

            Only in the old One’s eyes do I see a face

            Only there can I see any trace

                        of who I was or who I am to be

                        so I ask him what he knows of me

 

 

                                    “I thought you would never ask!” he laughs and slaps the ground

                                    “Why not ask those runners who go without the sound of names?”

            And with that, he hands me more button fruits and tells me to lie down

 

 

 

 

The magnetic wind funnels me into darkness again

I contort and snap and explode into rainbow fragments

This time I plummet deep within the howl

sounding the desert, driven by unreasoned hunger

I leap from the tinted desert

stretching out under bone-house  moon

the vast white darkness very like a sea

rolling out to horizon edge

no matter how long I run

toward dark mountain ships

that ride sand waves under night and sun

 

 

 

And then between dark and light, I hear panting

            and paws stopping short beside me

 

 

 

Two wolves – one gray, one red

lead me on a turning trail over earth rising

in swells of boulder and stone --  an ascending

narrow track where branch and rock give way 

to cloudless skies and piercing stars

We reach a hidden crevice

cradled in the mountain’s lap

We stand, noses alert, ears forward

as a sentinel wolf emerges and steps aside

to let us enter the den

 

 

Inside, stone ceilings crouch over furred backs

Dozens of pups and their mothers curled together

in a sleeping tangle of ears and paws

Asudden, from the back of the cave

a cool rush of wind and wings

as brown bats glide over the wolves

rippling pelts like dark grass fields

Wolves spring up at once in disturbed cave air

            bats circle back and wing by again

                        wolf feet follow the current of sound

back and forth      

                        back and forth

            wings and padded paws flow

                        like the rush and recede of sea waves

Immersed in vibrations of hundreds of wings and paws

I sink down and am drowned in the relentless play

            of wolf-fur and wings

                        the murmer of circling paws

                                    and wolf-breath in the dark

            

 

 

            I open my eyes, flushed and moist

                        panting hard, alert

                                    the hunger increased

                                                the longing deepened

                                                            the need for being with them bottomless

            I ache to enter and belong and never return

                        to this ponderous shell

                                    this breath-weighted body that

                                                cannot run with them

                                                            cannot be with them

                                                                        cannot even find them

 

 

 

                        “Maybe you shouldn’t go again,” the old One breaks in

            “But I must.  I must.  It’s where I belong.” 

 

                        “How do you know?” he cocks his head as he squats next to me

                                    looking into my left eye.

            “Because I cannot think of life without them!”

 

                        “They mean so much then?” he asks already knowing

            “They are everything and I am alone without them!”

 

                        “What makes you think they would have you?” he asks

            “Because they took me with them when I was lost.”

 

                        “Many a holy one has done so for many a stranger

            and still not turned stranger to saint in doing so.”

            “You speak in circular riddles.”  I spit

 

                        “Where lies the greater truth.”

            “I don’t care about truth or answers anymore.  I just want to be with them,” I say

 

                        “Really.”

            “Yes, really.  I would give anything.”

 

                        “Anything?” he squints at me

            “Yes, anything.”

 

                        “Even that part that runs with them?”

            “Especially that.”

 

                        “And what of the others in their world?”

            “Anything that is them, I call my relative.”            

                        “I see,” he says, and he does, I see

 

 

            The old One shuffles out the cave

            and is gone for several desert days

            I rest and doze and wait for him and what he brings

            And then, he calls me to come out of the cave

                        and motions to follow him down the arroyo trail

            After two days of steady walking, we reach a windy mesa

                        and climb its western rim

            My need is so great I will do anything with him

                        as the sun stares down this flat-edge place

                        we sit cross-legged, face to face

            He holds his hand palm up and there rest

                        two twisted dry brown roots or worms

            He nods

                        and I stuff them in my mouth, eager to return

                                    to go     and not come back

                                                            to feel their breath and follow their track

 

 

The implosion shrinks me to a dull black speck

Pain and sickness make me stagger and scream

No whirling funnel takes me down this time

This time I am drawn into a thin black line

            so narrow it squeezes my head and heart

            until they pop, spurting, split apart

I crawl on my belly, mouth in the dust

            no padded paws, no sound I trust

just crushing, relentless, monstrous pain

then, a disembodied voice asks

            “Where are you from?

                        “What is your name?”

My face is in the dirt, yet the voice is right in front of me

The sound slithers into my ears from a mouth I do not see

A dry sound of flesh sliding on stone comes next

and the voice asks again. 

 This time I feel cold breath

I open my eyes smeared with dirt and sweat

            and stare into yellow fire poised on a brown scaled neck

The snake’s head is huge, larger than my own

The body coiled behind it shelters a thousand bones

The scales erupt in tumerous warts

            and the stench they exude makes me gag and snort

I try to move but the yellow eyes lock me flat

            to the ground as it waits for my name

            which I can’t remember or from where I came

Now the creature rears up eight feet of its length   

             I leap to my haunches and attempt to spring

            around it – over it – through it – away

but wherever I dart is the face of the thing

            blocking my path with easy grace

            never losing the yellow unblinking stare in my face

“Since you won’t give me your name, I’ll tell you mine

            but understand, to hear it is to know only one of nine

Old Nightshade, I’m called since beginning my time

            the third of three and the sixth of nine”

The ponderous head sways side to side over me

“Although we are many, we are also one.

  We hold both dry desert and drowning sea

            Few ever find us no matter which they seek

            Do not tell anyone what you have seen 

 

I quickly agree and try to turn to go

            but Old Nightshade’s yellow chains hold fast

            as I stand beneath his head and gasp

                        to see the jaws slanting sideways unlocking the throat

                        as hunger slides out of my belly and into his

                        and all that was, will be and is

                        coils through my brain in life-time speed

                        as he lowers his jaws and I cease to breathe

Inside the mouth all is dark but I live

            and as quickly I’m spat out like sand through a seive

And now, no serpent, no scales, no yellow-eyed death

            Just me, alone, inhaling first breath.

 

            When I roll out from the dirt

            the old One is gone

            A Raven sits on a rock nearby

                        chortling a raucous taunting song

            I am alone, I see

                        and the teacher is gone.