Conceptum ex nihilo

In. Out. In. Out. In.
Chest heaving,
sweet breath, sacred ancestors’ gift,
circulating, spinning
like a pretty pinwheel
caught in a backwards-whirling hurricane
all through his tall, bullish frame,
propped against the taupe wall
like a sad clown puppet,
strings cut, and left eye-button gone missing.
“Fuck!” he screams
with what may well be his dying exhalation,
“I think I’ve gone too far out of my friggin’ mind.”
Out. In. Out. In. Out.
With every inhalation
the fetters of his mind are loosed,
his mental faculties expand and contract
to the rhythm of dancing flame,
pulsing sap in the high towering trees,
sleek stalking mountain cats,
bees from the rotting ox corpse,
sun shining on
stomping boots and rushing water,
pillar-climbing ivy and vineyard in neat, tidy rows,
frolicking beast-men with buxom lasses in crowns of summer grass,
and the inscrutable mask swinging from tree-branch
like a fruit-strange offering to placate the starry Virgo’s ire.
In. Out. In. Out. In.
The priest comes
back to himself, sitting cross-legged
like Orpheus before his God’s xoanon
in the smoke-filled, crimson-curtained adyton,
a pen in one hand
and an elk-bone pipe in the other.
All up and down his forearm is scribbled,
in rose red ink, the start
of a grand, brand new epic;
“Roland was a warrior
from the land of the Midnight Sun …”
Out.