Below Myself

What lives below myself is feeling.

What rind I find myself needs peeling.

I want to knife myself while kneeling.

Unwind the surface self til reeling.

My heart in treasure chest is heaving.

What is this life I live achieving?

But what’s this angry face so seething?

Where comes this cloven hoof now cleaving?

Who cuts the lock on casket hidden,

Who foists the force upon unbidden?

Who diving drops to depths so leaden,

To slice the tangled roots that deaden?

If I, who am ‘I’ when freedom comes?

So I am the feeling that was numbed.

What lives above this Self can be summed

As two entwined in doubt and not the

One.

A Dream About Counselling Work

My brother, Steve, and I, talking to a guy.
There's some work he wants to offer us.
(Steve's been struggling around work issues too).
The guy's a brilliant young biologist.

He's been working with trout, growing them large,
He says, up to eighty kilos.
Wow, that's one heavy lifting job, I joke,
Imagining giving them the heave-ho.

The guy knows my joke, but knows me better,
The cap-tipping banter of one anxious about work.
Of course, I'm working with them when they're lighter,
He says, and I, in a sudden realization, know my quirk
Of finding in images the heart of the matter.
I look inside again to what my soul calls me to.

And sunlight flashes on scales of silver,
As I lift heavy fishes and pour them on through,
To slip into streams from their large holding tanks,
And I know this is the work I will do.

The Holy Masculine

Bagpiper stands at the top of a hill,
And he’s calling to his clan:
I’ll find my art and perfect this craft,
Til I know the holy masculine.

And a poet prays til he falls silent,
And trusts his words again.
Then writes of things that touch his heart,
Til he knows the holy masculine.

And both alone they travel home,
To communities of other men.
To play their songs and share their words,
And embrace the holy masculine.