Cornucopia

a poem

However much we live by choice and will or else by faith in guidance on the labyrinthine passage through our years, however physical or insubstantial each of us may feel here in this world, however well we know we are a soul or almost deny it, however sharp and hard and alien the countless things may feel which touch us here or else how poignantly we hear the harper's song of meadow flowers and snow and hills and sea and sky and fellow-souls and reach forth our fingertips to touch the billowing and glistening spider's web of liquid jewels which this world is; however much we know that we are God; yet still all of us humans yearn to somehow see the place – perhaps a single point somewhere in infinite space and time or else some all-pervading all-creating mind – from which all this has always come.

The old Greeks had a Mystery At Elfesis. It was a huge boisterous pilgrimage from Athens to a magic hill. At regular frequent intervals for several hundred generations, in the cooling time when summer's barley crop was in and the rich fields awaited autumn's second sowing, then the whole folk of the city would rise up with song and dance and shouts and entertainments and tramp out a day of dusty miles, their brightly painted statues tugged along among the throng on a cart hung with bountiful floral decorations, out to the mystic hill where temples had been built and where, in fire-filled night, Our Mother would appear.

A tall young priestess always led the way, a tall covered basket burdening her head, hand in hand with a boy of tender years. Each time there was a crop of new initiates. These several dozen folk would walk and dance in sacred garb known as the "beggar's shirt". This was required for them to gain admittance to the final in-most sanctum of the flames. And on the way there was a stop where these several dozens aspirants were to be tested by an oath.

At an old stone farmhouse along the way, inside the high-walled quiet private courtyard, beneath a shady apple tree on a wooden altar, that large wicker basket lay with all its contents carefully spilled out on folds of linen dyed a blood red crimson. One by one each aspirant was brought, a drapery lifted by to suddenly reveal this work of art right there within hand's reach. And yes indeed, as prelude to the simple oath each person then must touch and lift and carefully replace each little bit of sacred this and that which spills out from Our Mother's womb.