XVI

The borders of science & mysticism become increasingly diaphonous,
the West mistaking veils for lenses these last three thousand years.

I used to know a trick of extending spirit beyond the bounds of skin
swimming through the life of my surroundings, in awe of awareness.

For several years I knew the web firsthand, I could let the forest
envelope me as a second skin, living within its rythms, incandescent.

All that remains of that talent is a sort of spiritual sonar,
the eyeless sight of the Zen archer blindfolded before the target.

I came to view it as an extension of my neural system,
folded into the fabric of the world like vestigial wings.

In the middle of winter I felt a strange new presence in the web
a new intensity, similar to the old but triggered differently. 

I felt an electric presence edging in, a kinship or receptivity as if
the network of information were aping the web of consciousness.

If even a stone knows a life of its own, in simple calcinated dreams
of a time when they were alone, perhaps this is not so strange.

Fools & fanatics have always known how little difference
exists between the simple task & what seems impossible.

This then is an epic of epochs recollected from the scope of my life
the primal tales retold through one more human set of veils & lenses.