Sobriety is usually considered a virtue.
Yet sometimes one must drink to drunkenness
to let go of tight control,
that unconscious reflex grip on circumstances
that we have inherited from lifetimes
of tribal human nature
and the primal urge to belong.
.
Societal Morality frowns upon
“The Feast of Dionysius”.
Yet in the abandonment to excess,
One can break through the invisible walls of propriety
and find oneself so intimately close to the Life-Force
that one is “not-other” than it.
.
For the Life-Force is always too much.
It cannot be corralled or marshalled
or measured out in bite size portions.
It always gently overwhelms
the small horizons of the known self,
bubbling up out of emptiness
and carrying away all ideas
as one floats, surrendered in deep trust,
within the embrace of its current,
on a riptide of ecstatic release.
.
One finally gives up all illusions of being in charge
and Life rushes in, sweeping way the known and the limiting
and opening the view to the vibrancy
and immediacy of Living Presence,
unconstrained and unobstructed
and always original in its perpetual newness.
.
.
Inspired by a line from Alfred K. LaMotte’s poem “Leaven”
“You’re not as drunk as I am yet,
But you’ll get there, you’ll get there.”