THERE
WAS A TREE OF LIFE IN PARADISE
"Ask the animals, and they will teach
you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth,
and it will teach you… does not the ear test words as the tongue tastes food?”
– JOB 12: 7-8; 11
God made all the animals of paradise
God also made their deep geography;
speak to this other earth and let it teach you
of image and likeness; out of god’s own
mystery god calls forth paradise; god
speaks in plurals way back when.
Watch the animals; how they will teach you.
Let your ear test words the way god speaks;
move to the edge and let god reach you
through image and likeness; out of god’s own
mystery springs forth first people, god
so fluid way back then.
*****************
Once upon a timeless time
god’s creation in excess
on a paradise tree had hung
liquor more than a tree could bear
and there, it was a little too much
paradise for any one.
Nowhere in your
scents of paradise does sense make more
of scents at work without toil
making more and more till more and more
becomes attractively attractive to
animal eyes hoping for tastes of bliss again.
Come now to the middle; lush life
ferments ferociously in the belly of its
creation beautiful without question.
Do interrogate the image; seek it
beautiful beyond imagination & desirable
there where paradise hangs forever fruiting.
During a high summer just a little too lush
for the creaturely soul, test the world of that word
causing lion to lie with lamb, both eating it
and not each other. What is agile & strong
is made keeper of animals until creation
turns over-ripe and then it falls
free for all; even here and even so
in paradise it will always already have been
made with a tomorrow to face.
But just here, one’s own proud and tinyGod also made their deep geography;
speak to this other earth and let it teach you
of image and likeness; out of god’s own
mystery god calls forth paradise; god
speaks in plurals way back when.
Watch the animals; how they will teach you.
Let your ear test words the way god speaks;
move to the edge and let god reach you
through image and likeness; out of god’s own
mystery springs forth first people, god
so fluid way back then.
*****************
Once upon a timeless time
god’s creation in excess
on a paradise tree had hung
liquor more than a tree could bear
and there, it was a little too much
paradise for any one.
Nowhere in your
scents of paradise does sense make more
of scents at work without toil
making more and more till more and more
becomes attractively attractive to
animal eyes hoping for tastes of bliss again.
Come now to the middle; lush life
ferments ferociously in the belly of its
creation beautiful without question.
Do interrogate the image; seek it
beautiful beyond imagination & desirable
there where paradise hangs forever fruiting.
During a high summer just a little too lush
for the creaturely soul, test the world of that word
causing lion to lie with lamb, both eating it
and not each other. What is agile & strong
is made keeper of animals until creation
turns over-ripe and then it falls
free for all; even here and even so
in paradise it will always already have been
made with a tomorrow to face.
funny and enormous
hilarious and pitiful, terrifyingly
creaturely, creative life will move its appetite
along the edge of night’s formless void
& will reflect, beautiful beyond imagination
“in there”; it will have been already traced
by animal spirits tasting of
vegetal soul an indefinite continuity.
One will have centuries already rich
in secret life; a life in which to
add to in life one’s own.
©2015 A New Year’s “Eve” Poem
stephaniepope mythopoetry.com #ToastPacifica2016
notes
1. Carl Jung on god as a psychic fact.
“God is a psychic fact of immediate experience, otherwise there would never have been any talk of God. The fact is valid in itself, requiring no non-psychological proof and inaccessible to any form of non-psychological criticism. It can be the most immediate and hence the most real of experiences, which can be neither ridiculed nor disproved.” - C.G. Jung. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche Bollingen: New York, 1960, p 328.
2. For a collection of more Jung quotes on how Jung thinks about”god” and or with his “god” idea see Caroline Myss blog “These Things Inside” https://thesethingsinside.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/carl-jung-says-god-is-reality-itself/
Also see Skip Conover's you tube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnPAoX58W_E&feature=youtu.be&a
3. It is told of the South African marula fruit how it has an ntoxicating effect on all animals eating it after it has ripened and fallen to the ground.
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