At The Crossroads An Ars Poetica Poem by Daniel Brick

I sometimes feel lighter than air.
as if the smallest breeze could lift me
and carry me to a fantastic zone of earth,
and deposit me among alien plants, rivers
winding out of sight, strange souls
in quiet creatures, orange and black finches
tracing melodies of their songs in their flight.
A calm makes me one with unthinking nature.

I no sooner agree to enjoy this forest life
than a hot wind bursts from a stand
of poplars, lifts me above this temperate zone
and sweeps me across a turbulent lake.
I wave my arms, as it they were awakened
wings, so grateful am I to experience flight.
But my gestures halt my flight, and I am
just sitting on my recliner in my living room...

Did something actual or mystical adjust
my consciousness to register the small facts
of my psyche? Or did these interior treasures
seize my attention within on their own initiative?
The engagement in space I call Flight; the engagement
in solitude I call Journey. Each is a mirror to the other.
Through them I stretch my mind to attain some higher state
of being. My psyche rejoices in this Crossroads.

When I descend into my psyche on my journey
into the solitude of Self, I encounter archetypal
energy, whose beings accompany me. With Gilgamesh
I tame the world and impose my will, even the gods
regard me with favor; with Orpheus I sing the Song
of Nature and my accord within it; with Odysseus
I liberate myself from the sloth of Calypso's Island;
with Apollo I defend the truth from those who debase it.

Flight in Space, Journey within Solitude -
These are the Crossroads of the Imagination, from which
my poems arise, gestate and spring forth, like Athena
from the head of Zeus, fully empowered. I will not write
an Epic Poem, nor the Poem of My Generation. I am only
a foot-soldier in the Conqueror's army, a novice student
in Plato's Academy, a Lyric Poet whose heart alone
measures his worth, whose voice is an instant in the wind.