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Reawakening
 
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.

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