Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 24 inches, framed as shown.
Is this the shore of Far Hesperides where Hercules was sent to labor? Perhaps one of the fabled Western Isles among which famous Irish mariners would wander? Perhaps some other Eden than we’ve heard a tale? Is that a ship at sail? Is that a sunset or a dawn? Is dark night passing by or coming on?
Here at some mythic threshold stands an emblem from an old Welsh tale: A tree still leafed in green and yet aflame. Among its boughs some red bird or bloom or fruit denotes the beating heart's desire. If I may tell the world a bit of secret things, this painting is the memory of magical initiations, as acolyte and then initiator. To those who have experienced this, a poem may suffice for further explanation.
The High Priest
This endless eddied world of surge and flow
may here and there forget to know
that it is All
but dreams instead
that it is You
or I.
Yet in each heart will ever lie the soul's deep pool,
the porphyry bowl of lotus wine,
the self-dissolving sigh,
so to my lips the endless draught you pour.
When I have drunk
and bathed
and drowned
and sunk beneath the waves I've found
my self somehow composed once more
and lifted to a sunlit shore where
wind-soaked flesh
and bony core
become an echoing ocean sound.
So now the eyes within my head look round
surprised to see both You and I
with callused feet on stony ground
still at unbounded ocean's edge
immersed in flowing sky.