THE SELF

Within the Sacred Mountains

Unseen,

Unnamed,
Unknown
Are slender, silent
Shafts of gold

Every second
Rock is being wrought
Worn away by wind and water
Layered and pressed,
Earth is pressured into stone
Ceaselessly, in a constant, slow dripping
Adagio
Magma bubbles, shapes, cools
Simmering, smoldering, seeping, slow
Beneath the twining roots of trees,
The wordless feet of animals,
Beneath the unquestioning crust
Secluded, sequestered
Slowly
Secretly
Gravity enfolds the mass
In an embrace of eternity
And the mountain continues to
Become

Self:
Here beneath this thin, susceptible skin
Beyond bone and blood and brain
Is a question
Eternally asked
By poets,
Mystics and fools
Called by many names,
This transcendent query
Is, like mountain,
In a timeless tide of transformation
Stratified and squeezed
By senses
Hollowed and shaped by the wind
Of words Lava of image, vision, concept, thought,
Bubbles, shapes, and cools into a structure
Called
Self

If the mind could be mined . . .
Its sensitive skin split,
Shafts sunk
And core samples taken,
When they had been analyzed,
Anatomized, augured
Would I know the
Minerals from the motivations?
The pyrite from the perceptions?
The obsidian from oblivion?

I have begun
To begin

Begun to learn the difference
Between diamonds and dross
To define the source of
My own gravity
To choose the energy
That will effect my change

Where my soul has been seamed with slag
And my spirit strip mined
I am learning to seal the excavation
Resurface, replant
Tree roots will learn their labyrinth dance anew
And the ground will heal

And some core samples yield up
Gold
An abundance of spirit, a wealth of soul

See . . . in this shaft shines understanding
And delving deeper,
Care, healing, trust
Glittering from this one, gilded nuggets of laughter
Below simmers celebration, merriment and revels
Down at the core, bubbling with delight,
Is the glowing, bright, liquid glass of joy
And Here

Here is a well of light and warmth,
A profusion of comfort, loyalty and giving
All resting,
Deep at the mountains heart,
On a solid bedrock of
Love

It is here I will invest my thoughts
My precepts, my concepts, my visions,
My words
My transcendent query
Called Self
For it is built on this bedrock
That becoming
Becomes
Belief

©Edwina Peterson Cross