Where do you feel most free?

Following William

Questing far and deep
I come to the poets
To artists and dreamers of thought who
‘Soar on wings above the earth.
Sometimes to dive and touch the mire
But only to graze, never to be caught’ *

I come here listening
Eternally a learner, ceaselessly a seeker
Made largely of wonder
I search for cloud trails where these feathers have flown
I follow their soaring, tumbling flight, reaching with stretched fingers,
Brushing celestial wings
“Was it thus for you? Indeed? And it is THUS for me!
How same, how different, how changing, how fascinating, don’t you think? . . .”
William cannot answer me,
Not Shakespeare, Blake, Carlos Williams,
Wordsworth or Yeats,
They fly before me
Into a radiant sun split infinity
I can only
Follow

I know how little I know
I know that understanding is a process
Knowledge not a destination
 
My universe dances in circles of changing chaos
The more I seek, the more I find
The more I find, the more I seek
The more I sense, the more I search
The more I search, the more I recognize
There is relevance in everything
Relationships everywhere

Sorrow, singing, shadows, self
My sacred wind that smelled of stars
Synchronicity . . .
Syzygy . . .
Soul

Unboxed
Unbroken
Unbound

Neither Wordsworth, nor Yeats, Blake nor Carlos Williams
Not even
Shakespeare
Ever had his finger on the pulse of God
They questioned, queried, wondered
Dreamed . . .
In flurry of free-thinking feathers
They fly before me

I can only
Follow


©Edwina Peterson Cross


* From “A Dream Play” by August Strindgerg. Translated by Jerry Turner

Indra’s Daughter speaks to the Poet:
You, child of man, you dreamer
You, skald, who best know how to live,
Soaring on wings above the earth,
Sometimes to dive and touch the mire
But only to graze, never to be caught.”

~
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
(William Blake)


The Birds

The world begins again!
Not wholly insufflated
the blackbirds in the rain
upon the dead topbranches
of the living tree,
stuck fast to the low clouds,
notate the dawn.
Their shrill cries sound
announcing appetite
and drop among the bending roses
and the dripping grass.

(William Carlos Williams)




To the Cuckoo

O blithe newcomer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice:
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;

O blessed birth! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, fairy place,
That is fit home for Thee!

(William Wordsworth)


The White Birds
 
I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea:
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can pass by and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that never may die.
 
A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose,      
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:
For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam—I and you.
 
I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more:      
Soon far from the rose and the lily, the fret of the flames, would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea.

(William Butler Yeats)


Southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
(William Shakespeare,  Hamlet: II, ii )