The Cleft Stone

In a cool dark damp ferny forest
a water source springs up in the midst of the undergrowth.
Without drama or shifted landscapes – there is water.
It rises an evanescence erupts into the outside world.

It is unstoppable
Unbearable pleasure
Its presence denotes depth
Deep sources unseen from above
Grooved and gorged deep underground
Collective potential
Of life giving water.

Springing, singing, splashing up
At this point in the forest floor under canopy and branch
A woven house of tree, a high cathedral vaulted with branch
And thatch of living leaf.

In this place, low to the ground, sheltered by fern and moss and leaf mould
In this place, mythical springing
Is the cleft stone
It lies huge and silent
Granite or something hard and softly grey, mineral that darkly glints.
It is satisfyingly rounded and smooth
Although I’ve never touched it.
It is marked for my mental furniture.

This cleft stone
Appears
When my eyes close
And my internal eyes close
And the internal narrative is shushed
And I settle into my internal self
At the point of between-ness
Concentration and letting go
The cleft stone appears in my sight and I know it’s time to
Step into the water and let go for a short time.
I don’t step over it – it’s too big.

The cleft stone
Rounded and pressed down
As a ball of dough depressed by the heel of a hand
Flattens and is impressed by
The weight and shape of the hand that presses
It is round and flattened
A lozenge, thick and generously curved
Deep, full, heavy
Down one of its long edges has been worn
A spigot, a spout, a pourer, a beak.
The cleft stone is a receptacle
The water sprung freshly on the forest floor runs over it
Drops.
It drops down a vertical cliff of sandstone
Lime water
Plants growing greenly out of the cracks.
The cleft stone
Is the tipping point
Between smoothly flat water and the edge, the point of the fall of water
  
Its cleft is a tool
Its cleft is water carved
Its cleft takes my body
Over the edge of consciousness
Its cleft takes my spirit
And the stone becomes enormous as I transform
And become other than my bodily self
And I float light as a leaf on the surface of the water
And again am taken over the edge and down into myself
And the journey of contemplation begins.

My rising to the surface
Out of the black water of contemplation
Re -sight
I re-see
I re-site myself in the now
And the cleft stone is present to me again
And I use it to lever back into the dark night
Out of the world of sense.

I don’t see it on the journey out
It is not part of that stage
It is behind
Waiting softly
Heavily submerged
For the next attempt.





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