Kundalini Splendor

Alive Together

Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been

alive with anyone under the sun,

when I might have been Abelard's woman

or the whore of a Renaissance pope

or a peasant wife with not enough food

and not enough love, with my children

dead of the plague. I might have slept

in an alcove next to the man

with the golden nose, who poked it

into the business of stars,

or sewn a starry flag

for a general with wooden teeth.

I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas

or a woman without a name

weeping in Master's bed

for my husband, exchanged for a mule,

my daughter, lost in a drunken bet.

I might have been stretched on a totem pole

to appease a vindictive god

or left, a useless girl-child,

to die on a cliff. I like to think

I might have been Mary Shelley

in love with a wrong-headed angel,

or Mary's friend.

I might have been you.

This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,

our chances of being alive together

statistically nonexistent;

still we have made it, alive in a time

when rationalists in square hats

and hatless Jehovah's Witnesses

agree it is almost over,

alive with our lively children

who--but for endless ifs--

might have missed out on being alive

together with marvels and follies

and longings and lies and wishes

and error and humor and mercy

and journeys and voices and faces

and colors and summers and mornings

and knowledge and tears and chance.

by Lisel Mueller

Notes: The astronomer Tycho Brahe ( 1546-1601) had lost part of his nose in a dueling mishap when he was young, so he made himself a false nosepiece out of metal, perhaps bronze covered in gold.

Heloise and Abelard are two of the most famous lovers in history. He was a philosopher and she a gifted scholar in twelfth century France, where he became her teacher in the house of her uncle. They became secret lovers, and she bore him a son. Her family was furious at him for what had happened, and had Abelard castrated. Heloise became a nun and he a monk. The two continued their relationship through letters to one another.

Some of the Renaissance popes did have mistresses outside the law.

The woman who sewed the stars was of course Betsy Ross who sewed the first flag for George Washington, who had false teeth.

Mary Shelley was the wife of the famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, considered by some to be an overly impassioned idealist.

If we want to extend the thought of Lisel Mueller's poem, we realize that it is in fact a miracle that any of us are here "alive together" at the same time in history; in fact, statistically it is virutally impossible that any one of us got born at all (as ourselves). And, for those of us touched by Kundalini, it often seems a near impossibility that such events have occurred in our lives. Thus each of us is a living miracle, touched by Mystery in ways we cannot account for, yet "alive together."