The Remnants of My Vanity

It was between day and night, a union of flesh and frustration,
I was filled, devoured, and regurgitated from all things.
I was a sorcerer’s apprentice, a warlock’s gatherer when the moon eclipsed
and the sun revealed to me an instant of forced pleasure.
Upon awakening amid a saturation of cells and sulfur
I saw the larger whole, a truth embedded in a path among thorns.

A fable and a feeling, a knife in the womb, this sacred text, this
sordid future, upon this trembling ground. Yet I broke the light,
discovering a garden of death and awe, a life of spirit and thought.
But this truth, this rock, this kingdom among garbage had its hold
as I fled the ground and scattered the lives in the wake of my feet.
The linens shredded, the fabric unfastened and slid away from me

As the remnants of my vanity fell away and the earth became enough.
I fell down the well, I fell into the depths of a life without want, a day
without desperation as sun the shone down the mountain revealing the
horse and the rider in white. I fell and continued to fall as night transformed
and then back again. She beckoned me with water this well, her smell
continuing my descent into the divine.

Water was all around me and yet I thirsted for it as my fingers slid through
its veil and back to my mouth dry as if never touched. I am still falling, thirsting
for that which is a promise, disguised by the sun, revealed in the night,
that mystery of flight.

J.M. Prater