John William Waterhouse

 

 

 

Shaman

 

gesture - sound

her hands move

her apprentice drums

the fire crackles

the smell of sweet-grass everywhere

 

she takes a puff from a burning cigar

throws some cedar branches on the fire

an unexpected "Whoop!"

comes tumbling out of her deepest being

a full-chested war-cry

 

my five senses duly retreat

and rise to higher sensitivities

I am not here to battle

this Warrior-Woman

 

the drum-sound changes

her ankle-bells begin to chime

a rhythm that coaxes out from hiding

another way of perception

 

she dances between us and the fire

a diminutive figure

crackling with life among the flames

 

her scrawny body combines

the energy of the earth

upon which her feet drum

the winds

whose essence her hands gather

and the fire behind her

that her head seems to control

so that her rack of frizzy hair seems aflame

 

she kicks up her feet

sand and dust shower down upon us

like so many stars

 

she brings down her arms

and the fire's heat slams into our faces

 

we each know without thinking

without saying

that we are the water fluidly moving

and she

in the center

the Fifth Element

the will that pumps purpose into the other four

 

as she begins to turn

it seems as if we and the fire

are spinning around her

 

we fall and rise

we want the earth to stop spinning

so we begin to spin ourselves

 

we spin a rhythm through which

a day becomes but a drum-beat

a night an off-beat

 

in the blink of an eye

perceptions are made

 or lost

and each of us feels

as if we are strands of her hair

 

she becomes the sun

we the planets

 

the fire burns hot

and so does my heart

my arms shoot up

they release anger

my feet stomp into the earth

anchoring my soul

 

i rise out of my own wild

self-absorbed abandon

and open my eyes

every loose and relaxed part of my body

flops up and down

we are naked

and in our nakedness

we find a common truth

 

the shaman had raised us out

of our individual selves

 

we begin to dance as one

when we next look up

she is gone

 

the old woman

who turned herself into a youthful girl

rebirthed us

and mothered us through our self-realization,

disappeared into the nearby forest

either to die or to re-gather her energy

 

 

 

2. Equinox

 

Light fades then shines again;

Darkness grows then wanes again.

If the Equinox were a duel, it would be a draw.

But darkness and light get along peacefully,

change into one another seamlessly.

 

 

 

3. Gwen

(In memory of poet Gwendolyn McEwen)

 

I am thinking of you, Gwen,

hoping you have become Isis

flying the skies like the kite she is,

on the wings of the western wind.

 

Once I climbed the Theban cliffs

above the Valley of the Queens.

Petrified by a swishing sound

in the deadened silence of the tombs,

I cowered in a wind-carved cave.

I crawled to the edge and looked

deep into the sheer drop, down

toward the desert floor and saw

a kite flying in circles.  Was it you?

 

 

 

 

4. Trance Poet

 

Each poem peels back a veil

that hides a link between

the heart’s sentience

and nature’s secret beauty.

 

The poet approaches

shamanic trance

with words and rhythm

then returns into mind and body,

tree trunk or sea;

transforms the same words

into spiritual paths;

transmutes meanings

into ecstasy.

 

 

 

 

Occultatum

 

The isopsephy of an anguipede

is a solar cycle, in gematria

fueling exponential meanings,

according to which the River Nile

was the year incarnate, while Abraxas’

comb blazed in the zodiacal sun

 

Snake-oil feet carry no temptations

for the morally lax, while hedonistic

bellies eat what ripens in their houses.

Kabbalists spin their eternal ciphers

and dance ecstatic till the rooster crows.

 

 

 

 

© 2007 Daniel Kolos