"Mystic" by David Pring-Mill, Frequent Contributor

Mystic

David Pring-Mill

Near sports memorabilia,

the mystic stumbled

as the dive bar also struggled

for light; and he then noticed

faces of fatigue

with raised caterpillar eyebrows.

In response, he talked about

the beatification of deserving trees

that made great books,

the canonization of all things forgotten

by a growing world.

He expressed his affection

for angelic prisoners

reviving the romance of Paris

in small moments of tenderness

and thunderstorms of passion,

in the greeting of strangers

as old friends,

in the soft music

of consecrated hearts.

He said prayers of intercession

for minds contrary to ruin

and inclined to ruin.

He made known the social dangers

of society, the pure joy

in branches of revival,

reaching out with bending arms

and all the splendor

of colors in liberation.

Poet’s Notes:  This poem is about the town drunk, the kind of man who conversationally corners you and is desperate to express himself, in love, in anger, in emerging fragments of philosophy. Although the patrons of this bar would likely regard the “mystic” as a nuisance, the poem instead treats him with dignity and interprets his words as spiritual revelation. We don’t witness the reactions after he begins speaking. We are deprived of any stark objective reality; the poem is fully aligned with the mystic. So we don’t know whether this was a man who simply had one too many, or whether his wisdom is real and coherent, and of influence.