Poetry Corner III

In our journey through life, especially in the earlier stages, there are moments of clarity so incredibly unique and wonderful, in which we seem to transcend our thinking and the boundaries of our imagination and truly take leaps forward. In short order, the moment is over and we usually simply 'snap back' into our familiar mode of operation. What joy then, if we had the presence of mind to somehow record moments like these!

One such moment for me, which occurred back in 1999, when I was 23 years old and just at the start of my journey into therapy for depression and anxiety, is recorded in the form of a poem. It has always shone out like a beacon among the many pages of poetry I have written over the years, and in revisiting it now I am reminded of why it is so important. It seems that every few years I have gone back to this one, and that each time it has held new significance and made more sense.

“Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.” - Carl Sandburg, from The Atlantic, March 1923.

Higher State Of Mind

Here I stand on my dream!

The brush beneath my feet, in arid sun-baked reedy knolls,

Ignites a tremble that rises to my knees, as the glory of the land unfolding

Below envelops me with the glow of life and death.

A carcass of a zebra in the distance catches my glazed eye with stark clarity

Against the backdrop of this aurora I cannot take in.

The breeze through the trees echoes of survival of the fittest,

And I question with two tenths of my brain what it means to be free

When, earlier, I flew along the canyon of the great Sahara

And experienced how it feels to be free as the eagle which inhabits the skies,

I was hastily reminded of the pain I have left so far behind me,

To the other side of this place I call home away from all I have known before.

Two days ago I’d have been in a state of mind excluding me from people,

Today I am in my elemental state!

I am as free from the limitations of my body as the rolling clouds

That stretch north, south, east and west and above and below me.

As far as I can see is further than you are from me..

Somewhere beyond the restraints of my mind I have transformed.

I have no need to seek new answers to old questions any more,

That notion of love and hate is an example of the unwritten truth of lies.

Holding you was the only freedom close to this I had ever experienced,

Until it was time for the cycle of raw emotions and pain to come back again.

Did I dream too soon, or was it the silver spoon that fed me as a child?

The memories flash back into the star that died millions of years ago.

To look down now and see the life to which I laid myself bare to emotions,

And obeyed the search for solutions to a situation I created for myself..

But no regrets reverberate back to me from this vantage point in the sky,

I am as free as Niagara to fall back to Earth to groom my soaking feathers.

When last I ate it was the trees with whom I shared conversation.

They all agreed it’s high time I stopped and went back to the root of it all,

To take stock of the past and rejuvenate myself for the future with hope,

So I sat and smoked, and thanked them for their advice, and hoped to return.

My dear friend, I wonder what you’re doing right now as I am running

Through the grass plains and forest alongside the rivers and lakes,

My reflection from the waterside holds my gaze as I transform into mist

To glide the aquatic dimensions below, to remember all I have been taught.

By the hand of the gods this place was created for me,

With just a certain combination of chemicals sprinkled in like spices

To open up the astral, unweave the web of human deceit and delusion,

And take me from the dissatisfaction of being locked forever in my cradle.

I have to close my eyes when the vision threatens to engulf me,

As I stand again on the shore of the coast and the sun bakes my back.

I feel the warmth ebb away after a sudden click that faltered in my head,

And my vision blurs and stutters with that familiar discomforting swirling.

Thank you for being a friend to me when I started this journey into myself,

And for all the love that you had for me when I was the shadow on the wall.

I can see all that you represented to the dislocated mind I have left behind..

I leave behind what you are, and remember when we could not be apart.

That ancient expectation has become an unforced smile on my salted lips,

The dry tears streaked across my cheek show you why I have departed.

Next week I’ll go somewhere different so that I can experience it again..

I hold on to the power of the tenths of my brain that I know how to use.

R. C. Greenlow

[23.05.1999]

Higher State Of Mind Copyright ©1999 R. C. Greenlow.

Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.