Mystagogic Lift Off
Robert Vivian
Mystic star and mystic door knob whose kinship is forged by shining, mystic midnight and mystic orange peels for homemade cleaning and limonene, phytochemical found therein, mystic branch and mystic candle holder whose job is to cradle string of Precambrian light without forsaking its intimate abiding in the kingdom of sigh, mystic headwaters and mystic emptying into other bodies of water and manmade canals and mystic rainbow after mythical thunderstorm whose ozone fills the air close to overflowing following lightning bolts snapping out sheets of stark surprise, mystic moonbeams streaming through open window to splash the wooden floor like a drowned man’s gaping mouth and mystic shadows outlining pools of darkness as a template for dying in shifting archipelagoes that connect the nights like shards of black glass, mystic weather vane and mystic tractor, mystic rustling of withered corn like threadbare fire beetling its way around the vast edges of a continental book entitled This Shelf Is Your Last Dry Chance, mystic butterfly fanning its wings on a sprig of lilac to give the moment its hushed sanctity before the wind comes and blows sanctity away to another flower, another insect and mystic frog whose slime is ooze primeval and teeming abundance, amphibious fulfillment at the nexus of land and water and land under water as a table to support life-giving algae, mystic predawn mists whose shrouds seek to cover all nakedness (though there’s nothing to be ashamed of, dear little pine cones opening your coffers on a bed of needles), all the more manifest of mercy and glory filled deliverance through nonsensical curricula and empty classrooms flooded with sunlight and so mystic ache and mystic longing and shoe box full of love letters, Dear Sally, Dear Roy, Dear T-Bone, yellowed news clippings, to do lists and note cards rife with data so as to choke up all sentiment and render unto dust, phone numbers of one-night stands and oh how I was the dream of a bird and bird myself on the morning flight of nuptials, mystic fever and mystic stillness and there’s no cure for longing for longing is the method and the madness, elixir of all becoming and moans reaching for heaven and therefore mystic porch and mystic lawn chairs and mystic spider web whose gossamer is a ghost unveiling its net of woven light and mystic house in the woods waiting for someone to stop by, someone named Petra, Amber or Doug, mystic flag stones and mystic chives to stoke one’s appetite, mystic apple tree and roof-top gazing near a fire escape plunging down to the alley below, new dream of birds and flying and riding atop the backs of elephants, camels, rolling mountains of pachyderms moving with maternal slowness and mystic streams hidden away from human traffic to offer sweet sanctuary, mystic highway and mystic crosses staked along for thousands of miles bent at different angles to commemorate high speed fatalities and mystic plastic flowers whose petals will not become grass, mystic billboards and 1-800 numbers, mystic travelers and late night radio voices loosed upon the lonely and the damned and the almost saved as we listen with ears whistled clean by private devastations like giant earth movers making way for strip malls, mystic gospel and mystic harmonicas, mystic outhouses roughing it with the hollyhocks, indubitable shit-house flowers, mystic downtown and mystic bridges and mystic suicides who jump off waving like John Berryman, their skirts or black ties flying like car lot streamers, mystic undercurrent and bottom-feeding fish, mystic barnacles and mystic dumpsters and those who root around in them for discarded items, mystic scavengers and mystic garage sales, mystic pinwheel spinning on a windless day, and where can you put all these amazements and what are you supposed to do with them, fellow wonderer and wanderer, fellow heartnik, the plinth we walk on in wooden clogs that go kurplunk and trap with a springing device called scandal, “no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever wondered was there anything I might need, for there was nothing I could not love,” channeling one’s inner Meister Eckhart and the greatest scandal and the greatest query is what to do with your joy, your concrete wonder made up of molecules and isotopes and chemical wildness spilling out with great abandon, how all the mystic things have come to be and the spirits they carry within that emanate their own force fields called agitrons, called faint, warbling vibrations experienced as continuous hum or personal carousel playing in your head, mystagogical and mystification, and mysterium to close the eyes and lips but still see, still hear the what-not that is there and the what-not that isn’t, I have always wanted a prayer that would shatter every boundary and embrace all created matter and mystic postcard, mystic skull and cross-bones on a bottle of rat poisoning, mystic Harley and mystic muffler backfiring on a hot summer night, there must be a constant celebration somewhere that never ends and somehow there’s a way to be alive that embraces every breath and every moment, every desire that comes rolling down the bowling lane with lights-out speed and urgency, the desire to touch and the desire to be touched, the desire to sing, the desire to fly because every spirit wants to fly so bird be spirit and wing be the modus operandi, feather be grace and lift off up into the empyrean in a flurry of constant praise, I am the echo of someone’s voice and that voice is meant for higher register and for soaring, for sky is my deliverance and my getting off point, mystic cloud, mystic atmosphere and mystic escape velocity, weightlessness here for the taking as there goes another one lifting higher and higher before it can be talked down from its journey to all the constellations, especially the ones we don’t know.
ROBERT VIVIAN is the author of The Tall Grass Trilogy and two books of meditative essays. He’s currently working on a collection of dervish essays.