The Man Who Divorced Himself And Married A Mermaid

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The Man Who Divorced Himself And Married A Mermaid

 

I had a dream-time vision.

Long time passing it was, and long time passed

was that man. That now I do not recall his way.

A dreaming of wild running and frenetic chase.

A rabbit in the eye of a hunting hound.

A mouse under the stoop of a hawk.

And even in this reverie, I remember still

there was a golden ring in my hand,

forged in pre-existence by the hold

of that Beloved

who has since come to set up house in my heart.

 

As I say, and as I have not yet said, but say now to your

souls ear. We are all hunted so.

For when we first turn to seek Her face.

A thousand eagle eyes of the Divine corner us

in the pinioned fix of a merciless love. A hypnotic gaze that

latches on to our death with remorseless certainty.

A certainty that will seem to play with us

as a cat does with a mouse until it loses its fear

and stands at last to be consumed.

 

Lovers know how to consume each other. Yet how cruel can

be that embrace, if both are not surrendered to the kismet

of a greater longing. A fire that licks the ash of desire

like a dragon of enticements, and never lets go.

It makes a moth of the soul, and sends it madly into the

flame reckless of itself. The more painted its wings, the more

easily it is caught in the snare of this hooded light. That is

why most moths are gray or dark hid in the dark. Yet it is

the nature of the creature to seek that burning allurement.

It is our nature to, to come close and then seek escape from

those fiery eyes that saturate our blood with the blood of a

sapient Intelligence that transfixes us implacably

to the pin of abandonment.

 

And so I ran thirsting and weak to a lake, and lay panting

above that deep mere like a shadow cast upon my own

reflection. The golden circlet I clutched to my fevered

distress,

glowed hot in the palm of my dreaming being.

The world was heavy about me,

and the look of night was pale ridden by twilight.

Too much it was to hold,

too much it was to release.

The stars winked cold and plotted every preying creature

against my life.

The sand in my hourglass was swift running,

my body unbuttoned by the hook of time.

I turned to the end of my rope

and prepared to hang my despair

from any rotting bough that held me fast

to the name of self and habitual disguise.

 

Dreamers wear their hats around a mythical monster, that

seems to be a flower of being, but is the capture of a sly

flatterer that clings to the vine that falls asleep in the world.

We dine with ghosts, and eat their refuse and think it the

cuisine of a great cook. Little understanding that no meal

made without the alchemy of our own preparation, can

nourish the root of life. Thus we are eaten alive by a

malignancy so cunningly wrought, we call it our own, and

wear that hat as if it were a trophy we had plucked from the

dirt of a battlefield. Yet this mendacious medallion is no just

reward for nobility, but an open sore made presentable for

the pallid applause of the defeated chefs of purblind reason.

 

As a leaf trembles upon a far branch,

so I trembled there, caught in the glare of my own doubt.

Fear wrapped me in the warp and woof,

my last standing shroud un-stringing

the tendons of my pounding sway

caught by that pursuit that was my haunting hate.

My ‘why and wherefore’ unraveling

in the graveyard shifting

of stone memorials turned stone-faced

into empty idols.

 

I cared not for the march of dawn,

but for the slaying of my weary enactment’s

now seen as the goads of desultory lesser gods

that sported distractedly

to play my pawn and fawning part upon their game.

I stood alone in this extremity

and cursed the night that blinds the day,

and the farsighted charlatan who drew his map

and lost his turn in the diversions of proclivity,

only to fall short-falling

into the maw of this moment.

 

We who wind our way within the mirage of time, are

forever rendered hungry ghosts that eat only of the past and

future. And so we feed upon that which is not now, and

book our tables in a cabaret of expectancy that has no

orientation to this present substance of our truth. We

shuffle and shuttle from one imagined state to an other,

while ignoring the estate of this, our seat of being. No

wonder we do not arrive at any place but within a dream of

life, so crooked and distorted by death we take it for true

experience.

 

And so it was,

and passing strange it was,

that the ring I grasped so tightly

flew unhindered to the fair finger

of my Beloved,

seen at last as a mermaid of my own siren Self.

I fell full feinting into Her heart,

and the lake of Her, drowned this drowning man,

and so it began this wedding of myself to Her.

 

I did not survive this love,

I am the mariner that sails his abandoned ship,

in the sea of His mistress,

and though I remain to say these things,

and though my journey is an unbegun beginning.

My heart is no longer a dreaming

but the ring about her fingering

that guides me, lingered still

upon the hand of She who owns me well.

 

 

love

 

eric

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2002. Eric Ashford. All rights Reserved.