At The Crossroads An Ars Poetica

I sometimes feel lighter than air. as if the smallest breeze could lift me and carry me to a fantastic zone of earth, and deposit me among alien plants, rivers winding out of sight, strange souls in quiet creatures, orange and black finches tracing melodies of their songs in their flight. A calm makes me one with unthinking nature. I no sooner agree to enjoy this forest life than a hot wind bursts from a stand of poplars, lifts me above this temperate zone and sweeps me across a turbulent lake. I wave my arms, as it they were awakened wings, so grateful am I to experience flight. But my gestures halt my flight, and I am just sitting on my recliner in my living room... Did something actual or mystical adjust my consciousness to register the small facts of my psyche? Or did these interior treasures seize my attention within on their own initiative? The engagement in space I call Flight; the engagement in solitude I call Journey. Each is a mirror to the other. Through them I stretch my mind to attain some higher state of being. My psyche rejoices in this Crossroads. When I descend into my psyche on my journey into the solitude of Self, I encounter archetypal energy, whose beings accompany me. With Gilgamesh I tame the world and impose my will, even the gods regard me with favor; with Orpheus I sing the Song of Nature and my accord within it; with Odysseus I liberate myself from the sloth of Calypso's Island; with Apollo I defend the truth from those who debase it. Flight in Space, Journey within Solitude - These are the Crossroads of the Imagination, from which my poems arise, gestate and spring forth, like Athena from the head of Zeus, fully empowered. I will not write an Epic Poem, nor the Poem of My Generation. I am only a foot-soldier in the Conqueror's army, a novice student in Plato's Academy, a Lyric Poet whose heart alone measures his worth, whose voice is an instant in the wind.