• Dawn arrives
    Carrying promise on her
    Sweet lips that whisper of present
    And future, sweeping her pale wings
    Against the sky, below and within which
    Life wakes.

    I,
    Standing alone on a
    Desert island known as the crossing,
    Move gingerly my feet
    Planted on the coarse dust
    Of generations past,
    And gaze longingly at the tree
    Which bursts from the center:
    At the elusive fruit that shines
    With what, as a human,
    I can perceive only as darkness,
    But know to be the Truth.

    With wizened, withered hands
    I reach out to pluck it, savor
    What I thought, as a child
    Would be sweet as honey
    Or bitter as wormwood,
    But know to be tasteless.

    The gatekeepers,
    Angel and flaming, floating sword
    Cast me out of Eden to fall
    Into the sulfurous clouds of hell
    Where my throat is melted,
    And my thirst forever quenched,
    With what, as a mortal, I thought to be suffering,
    But know to be immortality;
    Enlightenment.