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 Café 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.
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.
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The Living Cross
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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