Kundalini Splendor

Penelope’s Loom

My specialty

is waiting.

I sat here at my loom

winding and unwinding

my cloth

by day and by night

for endless years

while the grapes ripened

and fell.

Meanwhile the suitors

pressed me:

Some wanted

my possessions,

some my love,

all demanded that I constantly

attend.

Sometimes I got distracted,

engaged in a bit

of dalliance,

went too far

once or twice

but regretted it

later.

How could I remember

what had shaped my life

so long ago,

even before I arrived?

It was all now like a shadow

coming into focus now and again,

then disappearing into the

moonlight once more.

The name of what I waited for

was the voyager,

the other part of my spirit/self

gone astray for so long.

He traveled many lands,

had many adventures

to distract,

finally returned

and claimed me,

and I at last was united with

what I had longed for

for so long,

forgotten fragment,

journey’s end.

Dorothy Walters

January 15, 2011

(In Homer's great epic called the Odyssey, Penelope is the faithful wife of Odysseus, who is gone for 20 years first fighting the Trojan war, and then having various adventures for many years as he returns home. To fend off the many suitors who want to marry her in his absence, she weaves a cloth each day, and unravels it at night, promising to choose a mate when the work is finished. This poem is a retelling of the story as a kind of allegory of the soul--how we each long to be reunited with that part of ourselves that is missing or more or less forgotten (spirit, higher self, inner god or goddess). Finally, union is achieved (and Kundalini is one way this can happen) and we feel complete at last.

(Image is of a painting by John William Waterhouse, a pre-Raphaelite painter.)