WILD ONE by Paul Swatridge

(Record of a dream, written on a train, given to a stranger)

I live, I am alive,

but forget to remember this.

So now, knowing it, I celebrate,

defying the numbness of my other life.

In my dream I glow

and move with a singing vibrancy.

I flow, with the current of life

volting through my veins.

And now I see myself flesh-bare,

dancing the celebration of my sex.

In my power I stand,

proud at last of my priapic energy.

Not hunter, nor hunted, yet

grasping the emblems of my strength,

bow and spear, tight bound and thonged,

spliced, beaded, and bedecked.

I feel my centre low;

steel in my guts and feet rooted to the earth,

I am connected to all beings now

and dance the universal dance.

I reach back in time

to primitive man whose leathered feet

trod the very earth I now tread.

These sacred rocks beneath our fragile soles.

We are one spirit, he and I;

my moment of freedom

from the yoke of modern life;

open to forces my mind cannot grasp.

The wild calls me, and

I respond as if to a lover

for whom I yearn without and within.

A wisdom only now revealed.