James Moore Poet Narrative

Notes About The Poem

(“Before the Door”, 2023, original encaustic)

Rite of Passage

My life has been chock-full of rites of passage
From rising up through the ranks of Scouting 
To completing all the grades and degrees 
Of formal schooling
To the challenge and discovery
Of dangerous adventure sports 
And the many misadventures they naturally provide.

It’s included being initiated into 
And doing strenuous religious disciplines
And the good old all-American discipline
Of raising and supporting a family.
It’s also included the pain and suffering 
Of life-threatening injuries and accidents
And heart-threatening divorces.
But in all of this, looking back in retirement,
I’m not sure I ever got a complete rite of passage experience.

Did I somehow miss a step
Or feel the next level would give
What the last hadn’t?
Was there an insatiable need for more,
Bigger, better, more powerful hits of Life
To prepare me for what,
A bigger scope and experience of Living?

Was I stuck, and am I still,
In some arrested development;
Part way out of a shell, cracked but hard as iron
A soul confused by what it means to manifest?
Maybe it wasn’t just a matter of becoming 
A more mature person
As much as a more complete being,
One whose idea of complete while incomplete
Is ever expanding.

From the perspective of the Infinite
What is an appropriate Rite of Passage?
From the perspective of God
What is the step we have to take
To be complete?
Complete surrender, complete realization,
Complete and perfect communion 
Effort and release
To complete the path we youthfully took up in vain
Before we ever could conceive 
It is, and always has been, without end…

(8/9/26)

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