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Singing Dreams Into Form

by Jane Elsdon
 

"In the summer and autumn of 1995 the late Beverly [Ensing] Young, then Cal Poly architecture professor Ken Haggard, and I collaborated on a limited edition book for a January 1996 exhibit and poetry reading at Linnaea's CafĂ© in San Luis Obispo. The book, SINGING DREAMS INTO FORM, sold out in a few months.

These poems and paintings are from our first attempt at exphrastic writing and painting. It was an exciting collaboration and the reception received by it was beyond anything we imagined.

Cross

Descent

My pilgrimage has consisted of descending a
ladder of one thousand and one rungs to where
I have descended so low that I could reach out
and take the hand of the miserable clod of mud
that I am.
--Lauren Vander Post
quoting C. G. Jung

It is the longest journey
you will ever take,
a journey only the bravest
or most driven dare.
It is a descent demanding
everything that sometimes seems
to return only cinders.
It is a pilgrimage in braille
that will turn your hands into radar,
your knees into agony,
your gut into your greatest ally,
your heart into your inner guide,
your head into a distant relative,
but when, finally, you reach out
and clasp the hand of the one
who is your hidden unknown self
the wonder will baptize you
with an exhilaration of light
as you recognize this one true thing:
precarious as it may feel here,
I balance on the most sacred of ground
for surely this is the place
where Love begins.

Cross

The Living Cross

Old as humankind,
it is the center of creation,
the seat of the soul,
and our own heart's door
where, know it or not, we are
singing dreams into form..

Upheld on currents of chaos
in the chalice of the universe
the living cross
is that personal point of mystery
where the tapping
and the asking meet
at the gateway to infinity
upon an altar of stars.
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