Sunday poetry: May your trails be winding and full of wonder
Over the next few days the North Node, the point which marks the gatepost to the future, will connect with the new planet Eris named for the Goddess of Discord. Eris and Pluto have been in a square aspect since January 2020 and I think we can all agree that the last three years have been fairly discordant.
In honor of the transformation that creative chaos can bring, I offer this poem. The predictable offers a sense of safety and security and the comfort of knowing what comes next, but the discordant aspects of life have the potential to open up consciousness-altering experiences which make us feel alive.
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome,
dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.
May your rivers flow without end,
meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,
past temples and castles and poet’s towers,
into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl,
through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down
into a desert of red rock,
blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone,
and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm
where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,
where deer walk across white sand beaches,
where storms come and go
as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than your deepest
dreams
waits for you —
beyond the next turning of the canyon walls.
-Edward Abbey
