[Another of those beautiful synchronicities came upon seeing which Missive was #15: the labyrinth. When WOODS OF GOLD began, I was transported to the Labyrinth. This labyrinthine vision was a remarkable shapeshifter — what began as labyrinth (no wrong turns) became maze (many dead-ends) became ornate (ornamental) became ordinary (simple stone block walls and worn floors) — all dimensions of labyrinth~maze overlapped and became green, became grey, became gold — washed with light — fumbling in the dark — emerging. There was no terror to be found in the labyrinth, though there was a “dread” horned beast. An almost harplike, or harpsichord-esque music was playing in the background, flowing from somewhere corridors behind me. I was not choosing my path, but I was walking. As if I knew where I was going, but in a way that felt like not knowing. Around this time the lines “a maze of roots / Ornamented towards a goal, toward / A center, an exit, a mosaic” came through, and a part of me wished the word had been ‘labyrinth’ and not ‘maze’. Then a bit later as I prepare to write the foreword, I go to the fifteenth Missive to find LULLS IN LABYRINTHS — which says ‘maze’ only once, in its own foreword, and not in the body of the Missive text. So, the two speak to one another. Complementary. I follow the horned beast then to #74 - MEMORIES OF FUTURE: “The crisp brown leaves brush away to show a face / Worn stone, veined marble and black granite ../.. You must keep on down the road, a ways further / To the open room — a palisade of parallels / From one bright colored room into the next / Led by gentle minotaur with softly rounded nails / Horns ornamented with jewels and gold, the monster / Is not a menace, is a hierophant — showing / The way down a long dark corridor, winding / But without turns.” where we were first introduced to this (now-recurring) character — a gentle minotaur, horns ornamented with jewels and gold, monstrous but not a ‘menace’, rather a hierophantic guide~
I decided to label this fifteenth Ode a “Scribed Poetic Dictation” instead of Transcribed, as I made (without thinking) a number of changes to the dictated text. Somehow it was both permitted and natural to do so. ] Received 10/22/2025 | 8:08-21pm
Companion Missive #15 - LULLS IN LABYRINTHS (8/25/2023)
Listen to the Recitation:
WOODS OF GOLD
How do you tell your story?
Where do you start, and where
Do you end? Old god of gold —
A rich ripe bore borrows time
From the tock of a town;
I surge against the turning
And relish my own reliquary:
Once upon a bounding
Stitched up book, wounds taut
With a plum pudding plated
Metals rolled over cavities
Making hollow shellish links
Connected one by one, to another
This green leaf turns yellow
Then orange, then red, then brown
Mottled down to the woods floor
Slick with sickness, makes the pattern
No less beautiful — even more so
Colors uneven, veins punctured
Broken chains, storied sensates
Satiation does not dwell in the making
Of another tired and trying text
Oozing beauty in the perplexion
Complexity in the suspension
Of belief, I cannot say — why we try
To singe a fern’s curl to its fellow
Menace hands off the rails
Found beneath tiled subfloors, hidden
Layers built over older civilizations
Which lost decay to grandeur, glory-
Built fountains to monuments
In myths unspun, a maze of roots
Ornamented towards a goal, toward
A center, an exit, a mosaic
With bulls and eagles and angels and men:
The twin serpent changes one body
To another, to live a new life, without loss
Of memory from contents to containing
The dread fell beast with horns curled
Lowers its head to kiss the wet ground —
So long in drought, its creekbeds bare,
Now full and flush with the waters of life.
