School Reunion 2 Poem by Michael Maxwell Steer

Wisdom is not about being right, it's about
being in the centre of what's true for you.
The only teacher with any insight to this process
was a pædophile! What's to be made of that?

Listening to children, helping them find who they are, isn't
hard - unless you think the answer doesn't matter,
that to strive for individuation in an age of
mass-production is futile exercise.

The issues never change: to find the narrow path
in an age of satellite navigation is no
easier than it was in an age of camels -
except that today's distractions are more sophisticated.

Finding a personal voice - what does it mean? Why?
Sure, we each have personal voices - but not all are resonant.
Art is the union of personal and transpersonal.
Not everyone who tells a joke is a comedian.

It's like finding the way into creating a poem:
slowly /suddenly the inchoate sense coheres, an arche-
type, a mental vista opens. A narrow path
of feeling stretches forward from this point, from here

where I honestly am, towards a dimly glimpsed exterior.
The only illumination a little natural light covering
my next step. My way lies alone, by night.
Perhaps I am shuffling towards a dawn, perhaps not?

For me it's numinous as an emerging butterfly.
I cannot stride confidently over familiar terrain, like a
tour-guide leading a party around some well-known site,
serving up sound-bites that match their preconceptions.

I accept my position as a blade of grass accepts
the meadow, as a spring which flows thankful that
from its nerved mouth some force of earth expresses itself
with the meaning of nourishment to a dissolving river.

‘Not for the strut and trade of charms on ivory stages' -
but to cheat death, that is why I write and compose.
I have lived my life in intimate embrace with death,
flirting like passionate lovers, who can never be friends.

Twice s/he has nearly caught me. In the time remaining
therefore, my purpose is to encode the energies
of life, of prophets, of ascended masters: to take
my place humbly in the great lineage …

not of public fame, but the anonymous
transmission of wisdom perpetuated in tribal tradition -
to which literature is but relative, as a
faded photograph to a breathing human.

Wealth is no bulwark against death, only
those who follow the narrow path to the strait gate
and, stepping throu it, fall into the arms to eternity
can overleap the chasm, forever nowhere, forever found.

None of this makes sense to unenlightened minds -
they see how many paths lead to one destination,
yet cannot grasp that it is actually a single path leading
each person to totally different destinations.

It is not my business to convert or cajole;
I can acquit my soul only by being a witness,
using my considerable powers of persuasion
not to convince but to state my own truth plainly.

If so be, from my lifetime's study, a transpersonal
voice is heard as a harmonic of my personal sounding
then my work is real-ised, my fragrance released
like a leaf casually crushed to obtain its sweetness.


25-31/7/05