Kundalini Splendor

Note: Lisel Mueller is one of the most outstanding poets of our time. Her work is characterized by great exactitude of language and a cautious approach to all questions of ultimate reality. The beauty and insights of her writing create a compelling vision where nothing is taken for granted. I admire and honor her profoundly for her honesty and craft.

for Lisel

Of the midwinter blooming,
she said it was
"out of phase, like an angel
strayed into time, our world."
And after listening to the concert
(Shubert by Brendel),
she felt she had for two hours
been in "the nowhere
where the enchanted live."

She herself prefers not to overstep,
not to be torn
by the storms of passion,
the earthquakes of revelation.

And so she flirts with it,
the delicate border
where the contraries meet,
this familiar sensed world
and that other, reputed realm
of the unqualified sublime
which beckons, like Avalon,
always just out of reach
in the mists of the never fully revealed.

By nature, a bit shy,
her language is her honed instrument
of exploration,
exposing the hidden unexpecteds
lurking in the midst of the usual.
Words measured, nuanced,
exact,
like a sudden small rainbow of light
which chooses to dance,
momentarily, over a flower
just about to open.

copyright, Dorothy Walters