CAIRNLIGHT
Missive #82 - Transcribed Poetic Dictation with Vision
[Yesterday marks two years since the beginning of Little Cosmic Missives. Every day I am in awe and such deep gratitude for all that has come through these doors! I checked my analytics for the first time since setting it up and found that IP addresses from 44 countries have visited my humble site — most by way of google. Together we have accrued around thirty thousand individual reads since inception, with the average visit to LCM being 6 minutes and 40 seconds. While these numbers may seem modest to some, they are a remarkable boon to me. Before the birth of this platform, I had been keeping my writings relatively private, sending them directly to people in my life as moved, with the occasional in-person reading, ceremony, or scripted event. Now there have accumulated some ~500 pages of poetic transcription, in addition to several journal publications, one physical collection with 25 printed copies, and another collection in the early stages of design. I am dearly curious to see what this next year brings, and so, so endlessly thankful to all of you who have found me and decided to support this quest with your time, your attention, your resources. I hope you find this work, these words and visions, as stirring and sparking as I do. I hope they enrich and constellate your life in meaningful and unexpected ways. That they bring a needed element into play~
Tonight’s missive comes to you aboard a potent visionseries of the Mirrormaiden: similar in appearance to the “La Dame à la licorne” series of six tapestries, though with distinction. The Guodian Laozi appears as well, and plastromancy too — cairn as stone, as tomb, as horn, as echo-mirror shells reaching out to us. There is a forlorn hope which glows throughout it. May it reach you. In whole, or in fragment~ ] Received 5/8/25 | 9:23-10:13pm
Listen to the Recitation:
CAIRNLIGHT
Mirrormore; the unicorn's grace
Who rides in on a turtle's back
Carrying with them, the chalice
And the lion, stood up, paws on
A banner post, three griffins over
A field of yellow and red stripes
Diagonalwise, not quite ascant
And the tent, fast assembled,
Behind the maiden who waits
Upon the image of a full land
Boisterous and bounty, the call
Of a clairess, year after year
The gathering returns to this spot
Marked by stones, as holy sites are
Often, burials and hills and heaps
Covered in mist, fossils of fern
And nautilus, strange winged beetle
Without eyes, the wraps encroach
On a winding stair, going both ways
Down into the dark, and up into light
Into vanishment, abandonment
Where the Basileia reflects our kynne
And the watcher's gaze shallows
On the shining field of darken stars
Will, this bumbling barony, cast forth
A wish in the pond, strange still waters
At the backmost chamber of the cave
Clear and illuminated, by mystery
The sense of smell and touch connect
This forlorn maid to a long buried scene
Hidden in the marrow, in the myth
That sang her into being many years ago
Clutching coral stone beads and braces
For broken bounds, mere stitches to rip
In the aged bamboo slips, 2300 years
Elder Guodian sage, sending to us
The aged characters we so long for
Embracing a fragment of the way oft
Begotten barrens, the way forward
Is unfavorable; to return, favorable
See the old master and learn stillness
In moments of hardship, find its virtue
And power: straight from the heart,
A water buffalo emerges from the turtle's
Shell, cracking plastromantics, welding
Marks which hint at ahead or a back
As if one could choose, as if one could
Wish another way, other than the way
Which presents itself, intolerably,
And renders verdict on the season
And how the river shall run its course
Through this valley or that, before
The city's gates or under, where the rats
Dwell, in the noble sewers, glowing blue
Green in the twinkling subterranean dark
Lush and cloying, the clothing portends
Who one will be in a day, the whole
Of who one can be in a day, bearing
Wheels and balls and bones, cast
Into the fire, an austere auspicion
Mumbling graces heard through the cracks
In the wall, the hole in the corner, light
Peeking through the gap in the curtain
Which was said to have torn, top down
And yet billows so majestically in
The fast-assembled tent, seemingly empty
Behind the seated maiden, her face a mirror
Where yours should be. The lion has no eyes
And the unicorn, no horn. The turtle has grown
Tired of its burden and becomes an island
Forested peaks and grey gold granite
Outcropping fangs, temple vestments adorn
The wall, draping parapets down plaster
Currents, searching for the one unbegotten
Path down the mountain, back to the village
Where the others wait, frozen in stone
Forms, frozen in time and faces weathered—
They have been this way for many years now
Waiting for the one with the teal colored draught
To find and free them from their memories
Which hold them fast to place, living unalive
Without movement, the path overgrows
Dandelions cover the pavement, the ruts
Which used to drain melt, now hidden
And scattered bells and painted tiles
Crumbling and burying, sprouting up into
New growth, green and red and yellow
The pennant waving in the air, a butterfly
Fluttering its wings, lifting air
On its back, taking liberties to bushes
Nectar which distracts from the nectar needed
From less enticing blooms. Leave the buddleia
And seek the viburnum; she will know you
By your scent, by the curl of your nose
And the cracks on your finger, the furrows
On your palm. Ungripping, the pole bends
And begins to fall, breaking the face
Into a cache of 804 folds, before Chu
Was overrun by Qin — we thank the elderly
Scholars in our life, for their preservation
And their adoration of what must be saved.
Knowledge clings to us in the recesses of hope
And awaits us, beeming in the cairnlight.
The lion bows its head. The unicorn, rises~
