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When I awoke this morning, I asked for guidance: where was I supposed to be, where should I go? So, I made my pilgrimage to the Pagoda, and as I neared the pond, each of my steps brushing through the grass, muffled by the sound of the wind, I stood atop a flat stone, where I noticed Koi flashing through the water, their bodies such a fulfilling shade of orange; tadpoles darting among the roots of pond lilies; the grass around me thrumming with the buzz of bumblebees; a bull frog beginning his mantra of who-did-it; and draped unceremoniously across a pointed rock protruding above the surface of the water was a sunning water snake; its length resting in a series of serifs; banded in bone-white circles spanning its circumference, half the size of my wrist; its head positioned in a hollow on the far side of the outcrop. Even as the prayer flags began to snap and ripple on the stiff breeze, the stillness of the snake remained still, coiled within itself; and my stillness stilled more within me; becoming nearly as still as the snake’s stillness; nothing bothering it, not a thing disrupting me; engaged in not being engaged-- its strength looped within itself, what was entwined within itself basking in a drowse on warm stone; powerful but inert-- all of more than three feet of it, at peace in the world; and I at peace with it, having become peaceful within myself. Seeing through the water of the pond, observing the glaze of sky on top of it, then the snake atop the stone: latent spine of kundalini, nascent bolt of shakti-- reawakening when it reawakens. Wally
Swist’s books include Huang Po and
the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), The
Daodejing: An Interpretation, with David Breeden and Steven Schroeder
(Lamar
University Press, 2015), and Invocation (Lamar University Press, 2015). Some of his new poems
appear in carte blanche
(Canada), Commonweal, The Galway Review (Ireland), The Linnet’s Wings
(Ireland), North American Review, and Pulp Literature (Canada). Garrison Keillor recently
read one his poems
on the daily radio program The Writer’s Almanac. |
