A Conversation About Creating a Vision

The vision the conversation is about is recorded here.

Me without –

without hope, without vision,

without a dream for the future –

what could that be?

A testing? 

A between kind of place?

A terrible thwarting?

No – matter

is not sufficient.

I need also the soft frisson

of hope, though it may be

delusion.

The truth of fact

is one thing, and facts

are hard to shift, they are

rocks you trip over.

Truth stretches though,

to fractal infinity

with built-in random.

So I have hope

enough to create a vision.

The way is up,

I believe.

Then my friend 

tells me

her truth.

Rich, awful telling.

(Some of it I've heard

in other places before.)

A vision for the future

will pull you back, she says.

You'll be stuck

in / with / to 

the past you label bad.

Isn't it better to see 

your vision here, now?

Never mind (I think)

what I do see here and now.

The mere word Aleppo

conjures maimed children, 

terrified parents. 

In my own town

I see the deranged,

the homeless,

walking about

as part of 'normal'.

I will not blind my eye.

How long

should we let this lie?

Well, there is being and doing.

Nothing ventured....

The watery grief, even

the shock and rage,

all are real, each

is necessary, this

is a way to finding out 

what more brings life to life.

From that we create vision.

My soul can have it be

here, now, radiant, yes,

but my body

is trapped in time,

and my personality too,

frequently.

Pausing 

for reflection

is a thing we can do.

We can pull the vision close,

make it

an act of creation.

Deliberately stepping

for this moment

out of time,

hearing in mind and heart

the sweet words 

expressing our vision –

right then it is here,

we are in it,

and we carry back

to the everyday world

that consciousness –

a mechanism

of infiltration,

helping the vision spread.

High?

Far?

Always yet to be reached?

No. Only hear it.

Only hold it.

Know it. 
Be it.

And if that seems unreal, 

simply start

here, now.

Back Story

Susan, at Poets United's Midweek Motif, asks us for a vision of the future, in poetry. I am one of a sisterhood called the Goddesses of Shining Light, who spent months last year creating and articulating just that (though not in verse). Here (again) is the link; we are inviting people to listen and, if they choose, hold it in consciousness (and in their daily meditations if they do that). I couldn't say it better (and btw the concepts are not new – though arrived at anew – but bear reiterating). So I thought to write, instead, a poem about creating a vision.

I began with an erasure, and the idea that I might expand it. A friend (Debi Swim) sent me a package wrapped in a Barnes and Noble bag with an excerpt from Huckleberry Finn printed on one side, one from Moby Dick on the other. We don't have B&N in Australia; I was enchanted!  The first verse of my (unexpanded) erasure poem below was from Huck, the second courtesy of Ishmael.

Meanwhile I posted on facebook the invitation to listen to our vision. A friend suggested we'd do better to envision our ideal world as already here, not to dwell on the negatives (though in fact I don't think our vision does that, except perhaps by implication). I understand where she's coming from. However.... We had a long discussion, which gave rise to an expansion of the erasure poem into something else. I even incorporated (in verse two) some of Spellcheck's more creative mistakes! The resulting poem, above, is my vision poem for the prompt (not the vision itself – for which you must click the link and listen – but about the process).

Creating a Vision 

(erasure)

me without 

no matter

the truth

stretches

the way is up

rich awful

never mind

how long

nothing

the watery 

is a way 

my soul 

pausing

deliberately stepping

high