As it deepens, despair takes us into the very heart of human
darkness. There may well be a pinprick of light at the end of the proverbial
tunnel, but sometimes it is no more than a blur. Yet, if we can manage to focus even for
just an instant, the blur becomes a lantern that will guide us back into the
daylight and sunshine of what we laughingly call ‘normal’ life. After so many years of being made to feel bad about being gay, ana subsequently in and out if the damn closet like a jack-in-the-box, I was finally close to enlightenment. Yes, being gay was OK.
I made tough bit inspiring this journey in my early 30’s (I am in my 70's now) and it is the
closest I have ever come to experiencing an epiphany. Where I had once sought but never found any comfort or
inspiration in religion, a drowning mind-body-spirit sensed and reached out to a spirituality in the
nature of all things reassuring me that Earth Mother had not given up on me, and
I must not give up on myself.
RUNNING THE GAUNTLET or THE UNDEFEATED
Eyes
glowing in a premature darkness
like
cat’s eyes on a loping highway in a storm,
padding
its way with stealth and guile,
brushing
giant leaf and fern in Brobdingnag
concrete
jungle spread all around;
wings of
steel pitted against natural instinct;
dirt
tracks strewn with primeval litter,
secret
paths to Earth Mother’s hand written
poetry
and prose
Hear the
lion roar, rearing and pawing
at the
sky, unbowed by heaven’s wary eye;
flashes
like daggers at Caesar’s back,
taking
the Beast through its paces till it drops;
apes
swinging here and there,
mock a
weary lion but taking care to steer
well
clear, avoiding confrontation
else a
feast of claws devour even salvation,
torn
pages of Darwin
Ah, but let
the Beast rest while it may;
hunters
and hunted will find each other out
soon
enough, about to discover
what (if
any) creature can match us
eye for
eye, tooth for tooth,
and for
whom the wind composes a eulogy
where
darkest poetry and prose read,
old gods
(and new) mocking our inability
to
understand a word
Tunnel caving in, barely a pin-prick of light;
human spirit, running the gauntlet...
Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2016
[Note: Revised
(2016) from an earlier version that appears under the title ‘Heart of Darkness’
in 1st eds of The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004; revised ed.
in e-format in preparation.]
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