Primordial Encounter Poem by Denis Mair

(for a collage-painting by James Koehnline, dated Sept.7,2024)
...............

In the welter of ever-flowing immanence
primal creatures made their rounds
in a flux wrapped upon itself.
Being their all, the flux did not meet itself coming and going
in the convexity of a sphere curving away from them.
Instead, its arc embraced them all within its concavity.
That would be their privileged stage for realization,
by which they'd someday mark heaven off from earth.
The antic, curveting dance of waves
was a music to which no ear was tuned,
among creatures that broke through
to fight or frisk where the elements met.
The long glissading backs of waves
were briefly gem-faceted here and there,
and long fins fit for underwater flying,
by trick of light might show as angel wings,
though no one yet was there to see it so.
Then along came the original man,
the authentic knower of inner forked lightning,
the dweller in bewilderment of otherness,
upon whom dawned the will to know:
Why did his voice thrash like creatures of the deep
and struggle to break the boundaries of elements?
Why did fulfillment lie in re-conceiving their music?
What drove his striving to temper his voice
to be interpreter between energies of flame and wave,
and beyond that to utter the dialogue of all elements?
And so, as he dreamt the stages of his voice's ascent,
along came a holy man, who unbeknownst to him,
had branched off at one stage of the original man's own knowledge.
The holy man showed him the world encapsulated,
sustained by faith in oneness and by teachings of a source.
Such a captivating vision it was, containing the tree of lightning,
which the original man had once discovered within,
but now writ large as the tree of life, animating a whole world.
The world shown within the capsula called to the original man...
One version of himself turned towards it; another turned half-away;
yet another turned away to become a wizardly gnome,
who is seldom seen, except in apparatuses of his workings.
By turning half-aside, the original man again encounters
that tree of lightning he'd once begun to know within.
Now he plays servant to his own powers of expression and action,
still wrestling with bewilderment,
still seeking worthy steps of ascension,
to nourish his voice on all of nature's elements
and knit them into all of his doings.