Issue Seventeen - December 2010

Reading Jung Late at Night

By Maya Borhani

I see the pictures now just as they are,
golden knights and a fearsome dragon
come to contend for the fate of our souls.
They rise from the page in a language known
achingly to each dreamer, slumbering,
well-patterned after the waking life, and
what yet is to come in years tightly furled.
A world of images to be roused in
their own time, following hidden footsteps
most often undertaken in darkness,
confusion after childhood has long
ended, and the second sleep upon us,
arc of adulthood curving to the deep.
Beautifully wrought ships carry us inward,
myth our own to seek alone, unafraid,
serpent eating her own tail, mandalas
of color and light the reward we seek.
Awakened in our own time, to the god
within we bow down, queens and kings knowing
service to that most native in us all:
the life unlived guiding us to the end,
below the roar of tossing seas, or high
in cantilevered skies shedding sunbeams,
that which no teacher can ever tell, what
lives dangerously inside our own hearts.

Copyright Maya Borhani 2010

Maya Borhani grew up among eucalyptus, wild nasturtiums, and sour grass blossoms in Berkeley, California, before migrating to the great central valley, and later the Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California. A former resident of Lopez Island, her work has appeared in previous issues of Shark Reef, as well as in an upcoming special UNESCO issue of Multi-Disciplinary Research in the Arts. Maya has recently completed a Master of Arts degree in Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, on the topic of poetic inquiry and a/r/tography (the conflagration of artist/researcher/teacher). When not studying or writing, Maya spends her time hiking, playing in the dirt, and reveling in sunshine and beachcombing.

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