Kundalini Splendor

Many of us keep returning to "the moment which changes everything" (Katherine Anne Porter's phrase), going over what led up to it, how we prepared consciously or unconsciously for this momentous shift in our lives.

This little poem is a fanciful reflection on such a preparation. It has to do not with alien abduction, but rather with the total transformation which can occur in a single second. It suggests what we must relinquish, how ready we must be when the moment arrives.

At Midnight

To do this
you must surrender
all the advice which
was planted in you
by your grandmother,
your ancient aunt,
the old men by the fire.

You must give up
your convictions
of right and wrong,
notions of the line between possibility
and the unattainable.

You must breathe deep,
drink bitter herbs,
put a talisman
beneath your pillow.

At midnight,
when you are neither
waking or sleeping,
they will come for you,
arriving in sledges
or else in fleets
of wheeled airy transports.

You will not know them,
but you will recognize their voices
speaking a language
you cannot hear.

Be ready to go,
spring out from your resting place,
don’t even stop to
check the fire
or scribble
a final note.

Dorothy Walters
December 15, 2006