Detour

Tim was a poet but lost for words as he pondered the meaning of the cross Sat by the road side of his inner world and wondered which way to proceed His bones were weary his skin was parched the soul spired in lost ground He was confused for left and right up down and across or around everything Seemed to be steeped in towering void and the horizon an endless trapdoor All begins in the womb and ends in a tomb or just scant dust strewn into the past If I do nothing a gaping hole will swallow me in one without being whole And while I go nowhere I won’t know where the path might have led to A vertical vortex but surely there must be more than a circumscribed path All streets lead to City by the Tiber and if in Rome do as the Romans But they had nailed the Saviour to the cross in very unsavoury fashion and Tim was of Prussian descent forged in discipline and meticulous reason His ancestors had contorted the rood and taken the purified name of the Lord In vain had moulded history into swords Lebensraum and the Swastika Beyond all words and within all things they had spread the heart blood of Satan And their demons onto the field of Flanders and the vast Russian plains quite A cross to bear nailed into subconscious conscience and vile thorny crowns Humanity had passed the test of cruelty aberration and contempt of the world Tim had no faith left in Jesus and his motherly virgin left in the nib of his pen So he turned East where the sun rises without fail and a fig tree stood tall Portrayed an endless knot of wisdom rather than rigid perpendicular branches Cross legged in the lotus position and his limbs stretched to infinite limits but No wounds in wrists and ankles scarring and scaring hell bent idols and icons Tim listened to Oms spinning the sound of the earth and imagined chanting Bowls saffron robes and a third way unobscured by trivia and punishment Four noble truths and an eightfold path surely surpassed beams at right angles A lotus flower appeared a symbol of purity of body speech and mind with all Roots rooted in mud where outcome detachment slides off easily from its petals He would not cast any stones although he longed for pebbles thrown into an Ocean of love and compassion and concentric circles of infinite kindness His loin cloth came loose for he lost weight in contemplation and boulders Of hopelessness shed from his shoulders lifted his spirits lightened the load No more cave and no huge rock no mysterious lofty ascent to what some might Call glorious heaven no sin nor penance but a clear path to end the suffering of All suffering for all sentient beings one plain message one serene step at a time As his wounds healed and scabs fell like ashes into winds of everlasting change Tim levitated and finally grasped how to go forward and far away from the cross 28th February 2019