the dark journey of the poet

[revolutionR]

I remember
reading Rimbaud on gray days and words bleeding
into my astonished gaze, and seeing that I must be
a terrible worker too, my thoughts wander
down old roads that lead to Rome but that
also lead away from that city of sorrow and stone

when I wrote my first poem, the one I call
my first poem, that even though it was like
I was seeing history turning itself inside out
like a great mythological bird in a gyre of flight

what I was really seeing was a great tree of night
whose roots went all the way into the center
of the earth, I always see this as the meaning
of the poem, the journey into the roots
that grow up and down, as above so below

the dark ink becomes branched into the stars
this is how we see the forest for the universe
the universes are endless wiggling windows
open onto infinity, behind that is an eternal
tree growing into the core body of the cosmos

[judih]

this is why i read poetry
thank you, craig