GLEANERS

Seed Line: From the Poem “Ecstasy” by Vi Jones.
Posted on the Lemurian Abby Blog, Friday, May 20, 2005

“Such is ecstasy”


Seed Line: From a post by Tracey at the Joseph Campbell Mythology Group

“ Where are your bread crumbs now?”


Ecstasy. A word to crack the stars with splendor. Like much else in life, it’s meaning is constantly changing, altering and shifting; transposing, transforming, transmuting, transfiguring; translating like an ermine in the snow; modifying, metamorphosing, and mutating; molting flight feathers and springing up covered with soft, new down. The word has been erotic, metaphysical, descriptive, abstract, effervescent, linguistic, arousing, tangible, delicious, luxuriant, exciting, motivating, . . . A list that goes on forever: the voluminous, vivid and varied shapings of “ecstasy.”

And such is ecstasy . . .
Brimming with bounty, full of fulfilment, rocking away midnight with a baby at my breast. The luxuriant flood of slow pure light like liquid silk poured over the night, a luminous mountain moon. The transparent, transcendental reality of a rainbow splashed like a fantasy across the heavens. The suspended voluminous vastness of a summer sky shot with silent silver stars. The stillness of secret snow, breathing the wind, becoming whiteness as the world falls away in a rush of descent. The drowning sweetness of a mouth on mine, lit like lightening, melting my bones like wax. A sun of impossible fire sinking behind the mountains in an aching awe of color. The ripe, mellow moan of a single cello, the haunting, ancient call of a wooden flute, the spine shivering spill of a Celtic harp like a fey Bridge Between. Questing for words: desiring them, dreaming them, discovering them, drinking them, drawing them out into deep designs of . . . ecstasy.

The river above Ashland is rushing full with a spate of spring, tumbling and splashing in the green shadows beneath the pines and the towering redwoods. A sudden shudder . . . a thrill sings up the spine . . . a clear, indrawn breath of wonder. What walks beneath the trees, beside the river? Is it only twilight? Where are your bread crumbs now? “Follow your bliss,” the wise man said, but in the emerald shadows flowing beneath the ancient trees, I think that it is following me.


©Edwina Peterson Cross