Revelation: An exchange
Community: Part 5
An exchange: Community
Welcome back to the 5th installment! This month’s exchange is on the topic of Community, a series of six pieces written over the past three months, poems from Brian Funke, author of Poetry & Process, and Jason McBride, author of Weirdo Poetry. A newsletter will be published daily for six days, exploring different aspects of Community, each publication responding to and building on the prior piece from the collaborating artist. Read along and consider your own community with themes of childhood, friendship, love, broken community, leaving and returning, solitude, nature, searching, parenting, and promises.
I hope you enjoy this collaborative effort on Community.
Community: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
Revelation
Brian Funke
My first memory is a glade. I stood solid facing a wise man perched on an old ringed stump certain in gray certainty that all matters of truth had been settled. All has already been revealed through the great grand forefathers of long ago. Revelation today is no revelation at all just mere mortal flesh with a spirit of deceit. Come count these rings and memorize their contours then you too can perch and wait for a promised life. Age was wisdom. I counted the six-thousand rings and memorized their sixty-six contours. Perched for what felt a long while I watched seasons come and go from afar, forests green, color, then bare, winter to summer but still I was cold. My second memory is a forest. I walked with bare feet into the thick, every leaf and needle a cushion for fear rising from every possibility of revelation. How does a forest wind sing in the trees yet sting my face when I remember that stump. Wisdom was folly. This wild place haunted me with whispers of all who had passed this way before. Of the many who came this far yet returned to their glade there was one certain biography. But there was story after story, legend after legend, and myth after myth of those who tread onward to any place in their deepest being. My third memory is a storm. Ages into the forest after many foolish turns a confidence grew in wandering with a walking staff. I abandoned all notion that a past was worth a return to yet tired from effort of constant navigation to an end that was not before me. Folly in destination. One day in the midst of a rage I lost that staff, so looked for another. A refuge of branches was just enough shelter to trim dead leaves and twigs from my find and that’s when I saw the rings. Not thousands but enough to support the weight of my wandering until I find a glade or maybe a forest or perhaps just wander and reveal my own.
Revelation was brought to the forefront on reflecting on Jason’s poem, Oak Tree in the Glen. I wrote this piece in late 2022, where it sat in rough shape for almost two years. The setting of his piece paired with the exploration of solitude in community triggered the memory of this poem, which I then edited and reworked to it’s state that you experienced today.
One who has wandered and looked inward for guidance is one who can participate fully in the community of life.
Thank you for reading Part 5 of Community! Please leave a comment about what strikes you, speaks to you, or stirs in you while you read. Have you ever left a community and struck out to a place of exploration?
The finale of the exchange on Community will be published tomorrow! Until then…
May you find belonging in your wandering.
Brian