Monday, December 11, 2017
"Holy Gifts"––Poem by Dorothy
Holy Gifts
Much Madness is Divinest Sense
Emily Dickinson
And some have been given gifts.
They hear on a different level,
see in the distance or even nearby
that which is not perceptible
to the rest.
And some of us feel the extraordinary.
Stand before us
and we will know
the undetected bliss
of certain chakras.
On sacred ground,
we will sway
as the sweet energies
of earth itself
stream upward
into our breasts
(Tara and the holy wells
of Ireland,
Delphi and its surroundings
where the Maenads played
in Greece).
Let us touch
or even view
those works of art
into which
their creators have poured
their own life energies
(Rothko in Detroit,
that Chinese vase
fired in the emperor's kiln
so many centuries ago
to mark the beginning
of a new era, a new regime)
your Buddhist thangka from Nepal
with its bliss still alive,
flowing rapture into your head
when you bowed before it).
That Mozart chorus,
intensities so strong
you were but
a sounding board
fraught with resonance,
rapture flowing,
you had to struggle
not to ascend.
In public
you do not tell
or open,
try your best to look and act
like a proper
member of the tribe.
But in private,
secret practices,
movements so subtle
they cannot be perceived,
high frequencies entering
the body,
the head,
in rapture so refined
it cannot be described.
When the Greek armies,
starving and exhausted,
kept on marching toward
their mother, the sea,
the ones at the front were
the first to smell salt in the air,
and then the first sight.
The shout rang out and
echoed down the lines:
"Thallata, thallata."
Many wept with joy
or knelt in thanks.
The gods had listened.
They were going home.
Dorothy Walters
December 11, 2017
