Tuesday, September 18, 2018
The Bear––poem by Dorothy
The Bear
Suppose you went to sleep and suppose you dreamt that you held a beautiful flower and then suppose that when you awoke you found this beautiful flower in your hand. What then? What would you do?
(attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Somehow I
keep thinking about that bear,
the one with its head stuck in a pail
until some kind soul came along
and freed it,
wondering if we too are just
stumbling about,
heads stuck in a pail,
going no where, really,
supposing
that this darkness
is the only reality,
this place where the only sound
is the clang and bang
when we bump into something
hard and physical,
say a tree or
a boulder in our path,
or detect the roar
of an approaching earthquake,
or a fire breaking through.
What if someone
came along
when we least
expected it
and released us from
that pail
and the world suddenly
emerged
in Van Gogh colors
against the backdrop
of Mozart or Bach,
and we were surrounded
by angels,
dancing us into bliss––
would you believe
these testimonies?
Well, I have news for you.
I know people who
got healed, all at once,
from their lingering pain,
who heard celestial music
right there, on the mountain side,
while they were admiring the view,
who fell into ecstasy (a state
they had no word for)
one morning when they
woke up.
What if something like this
happened suddenly,
unexpectedly,
to each of us
as we entered
an awareness we could not name,
and when we finally
whispered out secret
into our neighbor's ear
they told us that
something similar
was also happening
to them,
what then?
What would we do?
Dorothy Walters
September 18, 2018
