One night, a full moon watched over me like a mother. In the blue light of the Basin, I saw a petroglyph on a large boulder. It was a spiral. I placed the tip of my finger on the center and began tracing the coil around and around. It spun off the rock. My finger kept circling the land, the lake, the sky. The spiral became larger and larger until it became a halo of stars in the night sky above Stansbury Island. A meteor flashed and as quickly disappeared. The waves continued to hiss and retreat, hiss and retreat.
In the West Desert of the Great Basin, I was not alone.
There is no dark like a night replete with the mystery of death. There is no truth like a fleeting wind. There is no lover like a lonely tree. There is no friend like a blade of faithful grass. There is no light like a solitary beam from the sun. There is no poem like an evolving earth and no Poet like the great Grace of Silence.
~ from POEMS OF THE SACRED UNKNOWN by Richard W. Bachtold
A poem is a passionate prayer of song with blessings from and for the faithful All, an innocent, sacramental creation remembering ancient tradition, a gift of praise at an invisible altar, and a lone priestly vision embraced by sacred silence, seeking forever the eternal unknown.
Sacred hart in the blackening wilderness stately deer, gracefully bounding, holy vision of the Eternal Heart; countless, unending blood memories, surge like gold through your rhythmic veins, ancient paths stir the soul's journey. Sleeping titans stand on the edge, disregarding the dark, grasping webs of life, or silver antlers shining with white wisdom, of pulsating pearls of poetry flowing from open eyes of song, as the saintly sculpture disappears from its vanishing home into a dying paradise.
