Solitary Unicorn: Carpe diem

22.9.10

Carpe diem

Seize the day, or Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...

take care to realize your destiny, training to achieve your full potential. Practice your scales, stand at the barre, twirl your baton, swim your laps. Everything is useful for self-discipline, in the grueling pace and race of life.

From the moment your alarm goes off in the morning until your head hits the pillow at nighttime, recite each moment as having meaning: in the way of the Celtic tradition, having a soul and the substance of a prayer. When we couple the daily monotonous events and rituals of life, sometimes menial, forever repetitious, with song and prayer, the moments become sacred and cherished. The essence of relationship forms, with both the divine nature, and those around us.

Music is composed note by note, understanding is built word by word, transcendence is reached prayer by prayer. And a home is built on good memories and cherished moments with the people we love and care for. When we gather them as rosebuds, we have a bouquet to adorn the table, a jar of potpourri, a fragrant perfume, a drawer sachet.

People enjoy the sea, yet they are cautious of her power, her unceasing rhythm, her roar of stinging salty grey which could pull one out to the depths and watery grave. Yet we worship in her fury, unceasing as the cords of death, we worship in her shadow. The sea is our mother and we cherish her power and her moons of plenty; her seashell harvest, and kelp washed beach of bleached driftwood.

The sea is like the unicorn, vast and beyond our imagination, both myth and legend. It is like the lion shaking his salty mane. Home of the whale and the starfish, a desert of blue and milky tide. The beginning of an embryo is unlike the minute life of the sea, in its fluid like a small universe. We dare not transgress against its miniature life, its small form, its tiny shadow--fluttering heart. To care, to shelter this life against the storm, is in essence to save one's life against the sea in our macrocosm. When the smallest unit of our life and humanity on earth has value, it is imparted to everyone and all are welcome and received. This small child is not weak or poor, still shaping its constitution and powers, but has nothing to give until its journey into life is complete.

Don't forget to love life unto birth, carpe diem ...

Emily

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Welcome!

Join with the mystical rambles of Emily Isaacson as she writes her medieval blog highlighting the makings of a poet and her career as a writer. She is a mythic soul, a solitary unicorn.

Weep, dance, cry here in the throes of an ancient universe as it draws near with riveting crash of cymbals. Be a stone groaning in the dark, see from nearer perspective whether she missed her mark. She is a hunter of visions and supernal influences.

Some people can just see in the dark, and they travel at the speed of light with luminous splendour. It is a miracle that makes a poem; it is an epiphany moment.

The unicorn is opposite the lion in the Canadian coat of arms. These two have similar natures, but one is proud and bold and one is reticent and reclusive. When you get near to lions they roar; when you get too close to unicorns they hide.

Unicorns are generators of the spirit world; they generate ideas and sell dreams.

Who will buy?

The Transparent Earth

Earth is bowed with a weight

Hard and heavy to bear;

Bowed and curved around the great

Core of despair.

Go into a deep cave,

Where the stone groans in the dark

Like a voice in the grave;

Lift up the light, and mark

The heavy sag of stone,

bearing its load of woe

Till time shall be undone

And the aching form can go,

So men have always said;

Earth is heavy and cold . . .

But in sleep I saw her, clear

As a drop of dew:

Like a crystal was her sphere,

And the sun shone through:

Standing at midnight in the street . . .

Solemn and lovely visions

and holy dreams,

Mysterious portents,

wanderers who range

Among unearthly themes,

Strong catalysts that change

The colors and the contours

of the mind;

Be silent in your valleys in the moon,

Fade to the country that we

never find:

For I am listening for that mortal tune,

The broken anthem of

my fallen kind . . .

These in the light of heaven

I shall behold,

If I can come there,

standing in the flame

Of glory, with the blessed

in their gold.

There is no dream more wonderful,

for they

Are worth the whole creation,

each alone.

Grant me to see their beauty

on that Day!

--Ruth Pitter

The Unicorn In Captivity

Here sits the Unicorn;
Leashed by a chain of gold
To the pomegranate tree.
So light a chain to hold
So fierce a beast;
Delicate as a cross at rest
On a maiden's breast.
He could snap the golden chain
With one toss of his mane,
If he chose to move,
If he chose to prove
His liberty.
But he does not chose
What choice would lose.
He stays, the Unicorn,
In captivity.

In captivity,
Flank, hoofs, and mane--
Yet look again--
His horn is free,
Rising above
Chain, fence, and tree,
Free hymn of love;
His horn
Bursts from a tranquil brow,
Like a comet horn;
Cleaves like a gallery's prow
Into seas untorn;
Springs like a lily, white
From the earth below;
Spirals, a bird in flight
To a longed for height;
Or a fountain bright,
Spurting to light
Of early morn--
O luminous horn!
...

Quiet, the Unicorn,
In contemplation stilled,
With acceptance filled;
Quiet, save for his horn;
Alive in his horn,
Horizontally,
In captivity;
Perpendicularly,
Free.
As prisoners might,
Looking on high at night,
From day-close discipline
Of walls and bars,
To night-free infinity
Of sky and stars,
Find here felicity:
So is he free--
The Unicorn.
What is liberty?
Here lives the Uniocrn,
In captivity,
Free.

Anne Morrow Lindberg