who does not wish, openly or secretly, <br />to meet it, in some quiet place? <br />even a secret image in the mind's dead index <br />of those materialists who <br />deny it a reality, calling it a <br />‘mythological creature’ – as if <br />the mind were not superior to flesh and earth? <br /> <br />this, the very reason for <br />its longevity – who would not, <br />were it material, have hunted it by now <br />for a prince’s ransom, its magic horn ground down, hunted to <br />extinction – so that we would say <br />‘as dead as unicorn’ and left <br />the dodo forgotten and unmourned? <br />and so, to be a myth is logical… <br /> <br />and thus, the unicorn lives, beyond <br />some banal death at a hunter’s hands; <br />easy, peaceful in its own preserves, <br />grazing in the pure air of our minds, <br />free to remind us that we too are born free. <br /> <br />the secrets of creation <br />hide in such unthought hills as paradox – <br />we, yearning for a meeting <br />in a place we know not where <br />where in that still and silent place <br />loud with silent joy, <br />moving in ways beyond the movement seen, <br />we meet it when the looking stops <br /> <br />and paradox on paradox, <br />once met, we do not seek to meet and meet again – <br />its tender single glance <br />tells us for ever that it always lived <br />inside ourselves; we ourselves <br />that ‘mythological creature’, <br />more real than our mirrored self, <br />grazing in the wooded groves of stillness, <br />the mossy dells of silence; or, <br />its wild mane wind-tossed, <br />on the flying highest hills of freedom <br />or bright-eyed, salt-browed, white <br />between the spraying waves and curling surf: <br />knowing ourselves to be, forever to have been: <br /> <br />unicorn<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/unicorn-13/
