The Rocks, The Snake And The Wheel
a Jungian Triptych
I.
These rocks are a tension
between earth and sky,
thrown abrupt against
unconscious blue,
an impulse of fire
cooled in the plunge of time.
They spoke a wheel hooped thru
a linked-inkling labyrinth
where bodies are boundaries
of what survives,
a collective of cells primitive as flint,
frail as the ash of last night's fire.
The rocks are mounded as flesh
on a woman's rib, precise as
arrows piercing the deflected sky,
a bow that grows from its string.
First we make a name,
then a story,
then a soul.
II.
Under the spinning
the flight featherless
the long glide down
from the first tree
the dreamt garden
oscillating the golden
penumbra of perception
where Snake found his tongue,
where the fruit grew sweeter
the longer it hung,
something made him wake
to hate the two that were one,
whole and disguised in the body of light,
singing ragged aubades to the forgetting sun.
Something made the snake
bring the
black limit,
the evasion of night
the cryptic jump,
Desire the fetish,
obsession for Knowing
as if it weren't right.
So the rock split to center,
one became two forever.
Go dancer,
celebrant, vessel,
come mender,
scrubwoman, shuffler
of cards,
losing the shape
and even the name
in sweat, blood and pain.
III.
Snake's in the
tree,
you can hear him whistle
his whole lithe length in control,
swinging out darkness,
his bite bringing dreams.
There's a dry stiff scale
shed at the crossroads,
a fang cast like a
horseshoe,
its half-circle hollow
for the poison to follow.
There's a trail in the dustworks
of a rabbit-poor summer, a lion
in shadow, a witch in the woods.
There's a snake in the matrix.
You can hear him sighing
where the fruit hangs low
its faint scent a pulse
in the wind at the threshold
of all that will come:
a woman screaming, a baby crying
a man dangling forever
slaved to the
wheel.
~March 2014
Challenge: Get Listed: Mind and Symbol
I have the fun of hosting this word list challenge today, based on words drawn from the first chapter of
Man and His Symbols, by C.G. Jung. For full details and all the words, check out the link above to real toads. I have made use of
a form introduced to us by Kerry O'Connor called the triptych, which emulates the concept of a triptych in the visual arts, a three-panel painting where each panel forms one third of the picture, exploring different views or details of the same subject.
Top Image: Red Hills, Lake George, by Georgia O'Keefe
May be protected by copyright. Posted under fair use guidelines.
Center Image: The Snake Charmer, 1907, by Henri Rousseau, Public Domain
Footer Image: Adam and Eve, 1533, by Lucas Crannoch The Elder,Public Domain
All via wikipaintings.org
