How many Lives?

For how many lives have we made the dark descent – oh my Beloved? How many times have You lain silent luminous partner ensnared in a shadowy web of forms? Under innumerable guises under ancient, forgotten skies Your blinding sun masked in feather and fin – and how was I to know Your flaming song?

As mineral the rains tore at our parts and sent them scuttling over the cliff to the whitened beach below. For a hundred million years we tumbled and broke on the cool ocean floors while the cosmos rang in our bones.

As sea plants we drifted the dark currents, you and I – more preyed upon than preying in the prayerless deep sea tides. Until, propped up with fluke and spine and purpose to our flashing tail we relentlessly pursued our plankton past!

As reptiles we tasted blood in marshes long since turned to tar shrieking our chartered savage rounds under the indifferent stars.

And now as man am I with the blood pull of a billion years webbing the mind and flesh to the pulsing thunder beneath the thumb. And how may I begin? And how am I to know your flaming song?

To these ourselves, our upward dreams who have known peace, and told cool on savage nights Ariel assumption of suns and grace the cave’s release – we have glimpsed the dazzling white coat of the Beloved and the soul turns restlessly in its sunless cave.

Stuart Judd