Walking the Labyrinth
I wrote this poem in October 2013 at the Scaritt Bennett Conference Center in Nashville. I stayed there while attending the Southern Festival of Books. They had a labyrinth, which I used as a walking meditation.
The path of the soul is not linear. It spirals like the turns of this maze, outlined with bricks on their sides. Like time, it circles back, passes by starting points. I turn left, one hundred eighty degrees. Not exactly the way I came, this path to the center, where there is no Minotaur. My dragons are all in my heart, slain or otherwise. The first wall outlines a square which no paths cross. Is this square sacred ground, reserved for shaman, priestess, and holy man? If I stepped inside where no tracks appear, would I transport to another place or time, reappear burned to ash by sacred Geometry? A friend asked a transit driver, in Nashville's less sacred geometry, Is this my stop? Her simple reply, “Either sit back down or get off the bus.”