6. Conflict

It is not simply grains of colored sand, 
I tell you.  It is not simply a white scarf 
and fruit laid before the Lama.  

Even though a strand of my hair 
(grown past my shoulders by then) 
was cut at the crown to stubble, 

I know the meaning of initiation.  
Do not tell me it is mumbo jumbo, 
or that I am a child of the devil.  

Let me say this: I embrace the unholy 
sonnets; the sacraments of desire;
the revelations of the Quran 

in their one hundred and fourteen suras; 
a goddess seated in the lap of a god;
sweating in a lodge of cedar and stone.

But friend, let me lower my eyes 
and break bread with you, 
sip the grape juice that becomes blood, 

tongue the wafer turned to a burning body.  
I kneel before your teachings.  
Call me what you will: pagan, infidel, child 

of darkness.  When I look at your body, 
a radiance blazes from your limbs 
where thirteen winged seraphim spin.


 

© Jan Lee Ande