Yesterday, as I was seeking inspiration for a new poem, I searched through a folder called "Really, Really Rough Drafts," thinking that, if I could not write something new, I could revise something old. Looking through this folder reminded me that I used to write an awful lot about religion and spirituality. I simply don't do that much anymore because I have become so cynical of and disillusioned with public displays of religion--including my own, I guess. If I am going to have religion, it can only be a search for and a mutual interaction with wisdom, beauty, truth, and love. I must experience the sublime, the idea that something is bigger than me and would exist without me but is somehow changed because I intermingle with it. The myth of my religion must be greater than the sum of my abilities to think it into existence, yet it must transform because I can only experience it in my unique way. I must be a part of all of it, the whole thing, yet be important enough to be allowed a special place in it. My religion needs no doctrine, dogma, ritual, or superstition. It cannot have a deity who responds to need and greed like a genie rubbed from a magic lamp to feed its supplicants' own selfishness. It cannot and does not judge because it is so far above and beyond judgement. My religion realizes that order and control is my mind placing a map over the universe, and, sometimes, it pulls that map away, lets me wander about aimlessly in awe of all those things beyond my control, and tells the truth about how small I really am.
Well, anyway, I found an old poem called Metamorphosis from 2002 which was not a very good poem. I kept two core ideas from the poem, the crucified Christ figure and the image that human ideas make up part of the scaffold on which that figure is hung, in this one and changed everything else about it. Oh! I did not change the rhyme scheme, and I have not checked the rhythm because...well...it seemed okay. It is a poem that is a bit more metaphysical than what I usually write, but not really more philosophical than what I think on a regular basis. I hope you can find something in it that you like. Enjoy!
The Nails
Where iron and wood combine
And the mortal frame confine,
A being most divine
Sips a sponge of soured wine.
What joy! His blood is sweet
Flowing from his hands and feet.
Where wood and iron meet,
Transformation is complete.
No living tree does bear
A flower or fruit so fair
Or imbue the timeless air
With so much love to spare.
With love, we teach our young
That this martyr must be hung.
Then, we place him on our tongue,
So his essence may be sung
Or that he may breathe again
Moving through the lives of men,
Women, children, freed from sin,
Nails of iron not of tin.
Oh, and the picture is one of Kellie's orchids that somehow she gets to keep blooms on most of the year. You get use to seeing them all the time that you forget how exquisite they are, kind of like religion.
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