Poem: Road to Rifted Rock

Road to the Rifted Rock

for Nancy

She sends me an email "January clarity"
with greetings "blessings are to be shared"
and photos of two halves of a grapefruit

titled "So open visually as to be clear".
Four days later, she sends another photo
showing a massive rock at end of the road.

Some ten years ago her photo of Found Eyes
in the hardened lava ground of Hawaii
inspired a poem "Two Eyes in the Earth"

and now these grapefruit eyes stare at me
challenging my mind to be more attentive
and see clearly the things close at hand.

I focus on the Road to Rifted Rock photo
with its vanishing point to the horizon
showing a massive rock blocking the way.

The mountain peaks and vanishing point
in this photo depict the Platonic Lambda
symbolizing "Soul of the Universe" but

where have I seen this "Rifted Rock" before?
Suddenly it dawns upon me— it's Doré's
engraving for Dante's Purgatorio's Canto 4—

We made our upward way through rifted rock;
along each side the edges pressed on us;
the ground beneath required feet and hands.

Virgil leads Dante up the steep slope to
the summit as they watched a chariot
of light passing the north where Phaethon

had passed on his way to the Sun before
being struck by the thunderbolt of Zeus—
may Saint Barbara protect me from harm

so Krishna's chariot may take me upward
beyond the rifted rock and vanishing point
to see the real light of ten thousand suns.

— Peter Y. Chou
Mountain View, 2-7-2013

Pair of Grapefruit Eyes
Photo © Nancy Dean Mercury

Dante's Purgatorio 4.31-33
Engraving by Gustave Doré (1867)