VISION QUEST

Did the World’s Soul

Once reside

Effulgent

In this Forsaken Land?

Did the Anima Mundi

Enfold the First Peoples

The foot-sore and Storm-wrecked

Who wished merely to Abide?

Did these Peoples find

In every Rock, River, Mountain, Forest

Prairie, Meadow, Desert, and Living Thing

The Beating Heart Of Gaia?

Were they Irradiated by the Cosmic Flow

Amidst Retreating Ice

Warming waters

And Brobdingnagian Trees?

In these untrod Lands

Was Spirit Innate

And its Soul

Self Evidently Present? 

Or was it ever veiled

Only revealed, perhaps

In the Dreams 

Of a Shaman’s Vision?