Forgive me for not returning your call.
Your voice caught me wandering,
lost, blind and torchless
through labyrinthine and somber Hades,
hopelessly searching
in blackest darkness for my lost soul.
The exit receded farther the more I groped for light,
without esoteric cartography
or the threaded benevolence of an Ariadne.
Fragments of what I used to call “I”
flew scattered by the western wind like dust
in an unknown infinity of despair.
Clinging at the edges of the abyss of nothingness,
I dangled, desperately gripping
the knife sharp and shredding cliffs
which tore my flesh.
There was no known hand
reaching to me in saving grace
and bridge back to my self
to deliver me from an inevitable and fated crash;
no familiar or unfamiliar friendly face
to call my name
among the ghosts and shadows
and draw me on upwards to safety.
I was alone, defeated, crushed.
Agonizing in the feared yet greater impending darkness,
incoming total annihilation,
mercilessly exploded by the avenging Fates
into a billion nameless atoms.
Anonymous even to myself,
I desperately searched among them
for the one called “I”,
now dark matter,
invisible, intangible, weightless;
now hiding somewhere beyond time-space,
beyond the reach of light,
now ever and without reprieve pulling
with unprecedented gravity
into the voracious guts of death or madness.
It was in my most desperate hour that
Michael, beloved angel of freedom appeared
in the deepest recesses of the labyrinth.
He lit a torch piercing the darkness
and through that crack of light I asked him:
“Can you help me find the sacred atom called Myself
who cries out for me
among the scattered dust which was once me;
those now invisible and heavy particles
turned to dark matter,
change them back
to their original luminous state
and gather them again in recognizable shape?”
He cut the stifled air with his hand
and there appeared a golden gate in the wall of my prison.
Two attending angels appeared
and he presented them to me:
“These are your guardians for now:
I will supervise as they
go on with you in this marvelous hunt
for the radiant cosmic dust
out of which you will be reborn.
Not of earthly dust,
but divine substance now shall be yours.
Dark will turn to light
and a new universe shall be yours.”
Out into the light
I walked holding on to their hands,
As we stood outside the gate,
I felt a strange and delicious spidering
upwards through my spine.
The attendant angels looked on smiling
as I sprouted wings as light as gossamer.
And as I stood there in wonderment,
winged Michael stepped forward
and placed his hand on my head.
A flash of lightning split the heavens
and entered my head;
the blindfold fell from my eyes.
And I could see,
spread all over the sky, a radiant cloud
made up of an infinitude of luminous particles
of luminous dust circulating among the galaxies.
Then the attendant angels stood
on either side of me
and took my hands and spoke for the first time:
“Let’s fly ”.
I flew back into my soul in sacred procession,
carrying the holy atom of the self
back to its throne.