North Pole

author's note:

Some people report having long conversations with their deity, as if talking to a buddy.

But I believe any honest spirit would seem more schoolmarm than school pal.


NORTH POLE

PART I

Because I followed what I thought to be
the summons of an unseen angel...

I expected to find diamonds here
not this dark land of ice:

but at the top of the world
there's nowhere left to go
so I sat down
and allowed myself
to be frozen solid--

cursing that angel voice
until I finally surrendered
and begin to listen
to what my own heart told me:

I needed to live alone now--
so I could hear the bells--
their rolling sound seen
in the fragrant purple lights
running through the sky
of perpetual night--

only then could I perceive
how those bells are echoed below
by the streams of red and blue suns
flowing beneath this luminous icecap:

my own voice told me
the obvious:
I came here to retrieve
what I didn't know I'd lost--
what I didn't know I needed--
something whose sound
and look
and feeling
I'd forgotten

until I fooled myself
by listening to that angel--
fooled myself
into trudging through the snow
all the way to the North Pole.


PART II

But again the angel irritates
as it insists I now need
what I left behind: that dust
and those green leaves
with their brown splotches--

I want to resist
even though I've come to realize
that devious spirit
really does know best--

I wish I could resist
but I've learned
this truth of all human life:
we are movement.

So I might as well
rise with the dawn
because the past has also taught me:
my feet will start to walk
even if I cover over
the voice...of my own heart.

© 2012, Michael R. Patton
searching for the new mythology