1
I was born in
an auto graveyard
or perhaps made
my way there somehow
after being birthed
by the side of the road
First thing I remember.
Everything was ruined.
Everything had fallen
and in the course of my life
fell further, deeper
until we arrived at
the mire we live in today,
a quicksand to suck
us all down.
2
Wait! I was NOT
born in an auto graveyard
but in a hospital in New York
whose name calls up a Batman movie,
Gotham Hospital, now defunct—
Oh, God, where
am I going with this?—
But I grew up in the Midwest.
3
It is there I remember
heaven and hell
both on the same day
and innocence lost
for many years.
After that day,
mouth invisibly wired shut,
Taboo applied: Do not speak
what you know/saw/felt.
Secrecy guarded by phantoms.
Parts of myself set against me.
4
20 years I spent impersonating myself.
Redemption so far away
no light came through.
But then came such desperation
I scrawled a note
put it into a bottle
hurled it into a raging sea.
Sometime later came
a reply gleaming
with brilliant Light.
I saw the gleam
as dim, so veiled
was my vision.
5
I share this as a fairy tale of sorts.
No one in the “real” world
would believe it for a second.
What were the odds
that a message thrown
into a maelstrom
would bring a reply
and not long after,
those veils excised forever,
brilliant Light shining
from my own eyes?
It was the Original Light
that illumines the Cosmos
and shines in the depths
of each of us.
6
I thought that blast of Light
would take me Home,
but now there are new veils-
no, not new, but newly conscious
to break through
and I continue to pray
to the One Within
who has answered
my prayers before.
7
But at least now I know this:
nothing is impossible
for the Holy One who is
the deepest Self
of us all.
