Revelation: An exchange

Community: Part 5

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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

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Revelation

Brian Funke

Photo by Yves Alarie

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.

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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.

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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

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