DELPHI

As a traveller from a snakeless land
it is not the death of Python
I seek here Apollo
but the life

Waiting in the antechamber of your sanctuary
surrounded by familiar ghosts
a vision arises
It is not the spirit of the future
that enters me
my heart is already well acquainted
with that descent
It is she
the rising serpent power
that whispers from the past
" Treasure is strewn in all directions
of time and space from the omphalus "

My soul vibrates with
winged denizens of spirit
I recall the vision of the greeks
on the way to Troy
an eagle flying with a
blood red serpent
struggling in its talons
but this is not the tale
the oracle offers me here
in her outer court

the eagle is there, of course
with the diamond eye
and the sun of Apollo
well past the zenith
sends its fire over Parnassus
In a flash
the serpent leaps like
a reversed lightning bolt from
earth to heaven
Ouroboros uncoils from the egg
the eagle is struck
where the scaly leg first
swells into feathers

the enervating venom enters
and at once the bird turns
and hurtles straight down
not a fall
but a deliberate and eager
surrender to gravity
wings close, plummeting
into the chasm of Delphi
Just when one would expect
the feathery explosion
Gaia opens
to receive the bird of Zeus

opens all the way
in one great crack
so that the messenger of spirit
may penetrate
to the fiery heart
of this great sanctuary
to fertilise once more
the mysteries
Pythagorus once sought
their resurrection here
but it is today I sense
the rumble and the rising

three serpents fusing
spirit, son and mater
create once more the tripod
that holds aloft
the dark dreamless gaze
of the phoenix