“I have a karmic bond with the immortals…
[in the form of] ambrosia past the end of time.”
Luo Quilan (1755-1813), Climbing the Highest Peak of Maoshan
With strokes that note a sound, a word,
a living thought, if ordered, arrayed well,
we with bodies curved by anguine spines
may rise and spread out soaring plumes.
And what is word? Isn’t a pulse of ring
that could gather and pass on all the rivers,
springs, and rains, or mountains of the world
just as it can bear leaves of life and love or kill?
With words we wade and widen our hearts
along with the gaps of times and parting space
and use them, if we can, as succeeding steps
to what beckons inborn knowing brilliance,
the ambrosia—poesy intones in us as an art
of consonance and angling, ensouled intuition.
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