The New Life: Third Stage For Marie

It was a day of high clouds that contained summer's last day. I watched the sunset framed by my apartment's southwest windows, a band of glowing light, whose sheen pierced the white clouds. I saw red streaks brush yellow patches, and yellow burnished into gold, its glow a new color only angels apprehended in sudden flight. And now was this vision mine as well? I met the aged seer a few hours later on a nondescript Minneapolis street. Her face was wrinkled by decades of harsh experience, there was no smile shaped by her lips or spilling from her eyes, and yet to my novice sight, she seemed supremely happy... Her first words to me were harsh beyond reckoning: 'Don't let the Poetry mislead you. Plato was probably right, after all. Poets cannot be trusted. They are liars all! ' She said this in a loud, cracked voice at the intersection of the Lake and Chicago, where the remnants of the midnight people awaited one of the last buses of the night. I was nonplussed, and more than a little weary of this latest encounter with a seer. When would they assign me a mission? When would allow me to finish this passage? Looking back, I realize this was a major test, and I was close to failing it outright. What saved me? It was my earlier impression that this seemingly cantankerous old woman was, in truth, supremely happy. I turned to face her in all humility, and felt a charge of grace course through my body, deep into my mind and touch my soul! 'My hands are usually empty, I am a beggar of Poetry.' So I spoke, hardly knowing what it meant. 'Oh, keep writing your poems, ' she said abruptly. 'They can't do any harm, maybe they are carriers of a wisdom alien to mine. I only know what the Golden Light has revealed to me. You are not ready to receive it yet. It's up to you to figure out WHY NOT.' Her voice trailed off, and her form vanished in a blink of my eyes. No one at the bus stop noticed it. As I turned away and started walking west on Lake Street, I heard a voice within, from deep down where the small things lived. It said, 'Your Enlightenment has been postponed, it's rescheduled for another time, place.... '