The Secret Gem

I speak through the charm and entrance

of wood elves and strange folk,

their foreign tongues, their wild currencies, open

like fragrant flowers, or tomes

dust-bound, ripe with Mystery.

In another land, so utterly displaced,

one comes to know oneself

in relation to new things: aspects

of my interior

whose mere existence I would hardly,

if at all, ever come to have known,

are now made known to me,

brought out especially by this

unique, intrinsic place

of special circumstances, inescapable histories,

ever-changing roads and bewildering people.

So whether in the heaving haul of the desert,

or the cobweb’d interior of the jungle,

ancient and invincible,

or the eternal ice palaces at the crown of the World,

whose bosoms wait, the white, ivory dust

of a thousand seasons bowing them down,

they sparkle with the magic of a Timeless flame

kindled amid the frigid dereliction

of abandoned thought…

09/15/2016

Richmond