Monday, October 29, 2018
Vishnu's Child––Poem by Dorothy
Vishnu's Child
"What thing I truly am I know not clearly:
mysterious, fettered in my mind I wander."
Rig Veda
Knowing little, I made my way
through thicket and rising water
across an unmapped land without a name.
How I longed for the horizontal
mark, to stamp me
as Shiva's own.
Yet I knew
that vertical was my lot,
my calling to be led
by Vishnu, the gentler one,
with intensity I could bear.
Consecrated words were my signposts,
symbols the arrows leading on.
Mostly it was electric current
claiming my body,
my ghost self
so long forgotten,
now gathered around,
penetrating each pore.
Who sent these massive
infusions of joy,
these lovestrokes
from invisible hands,
transfiguring me
into an other,
an unexpected being not encountered before?
What was the purpose of this reconfiguration?
Is this the coming state
of all of us
as we are turned to gold?
Dorothy Walters
October 27, 2018
(In certain Hindu traditions followers of Shiva (the creator/destroyer) wear 3 horizontal stripes on their foreheads, whereas the followers of Vishnu (the preserver) wear vertical stripes.)
