FLOWERS IN CRANNIED WALLS

[RonPrice]

The poetry of America, some have said, is in its bridges; the poetry of Christianity is, following a similar line of emphasis, in her churches; the poetry of Islam in her Mosques and of the Baha’i Faith in what has come to be known as the eighth wonder of the world, its Handing Gardens, located precisely 530 miles due west of Babylon whose Hanging Gardens were one of the legendary seven wonders of the ancient world. Poetry, of course, grows out of many flowers in the various crannied walls of countries, religions and locations where flowers grow, as Tennyson put it:

FLOWER in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
-Alfred Tennyson, 1809–92.

There are several other outstanding pieces of architecture at Baha’i centres around the world which also inspire poetry. And then there is this poetry of mine, although I hesitate to call it mine. Perchance these words have come from a leaven that leavens the world of being and furnishes a certain power for this art of made manifest. Thus and so, perchance, perforce, perhaps, it grows in the flowers of the crannied walls of my own life. Written during the forth and fifth epochs of a new formative age, a formative age quite unlike its Greek predecessor more than 2500 years ago, it is part of a wider artistic experience of the time when this eighth wonder was designed and constructed: 1989-2001.

If this poetry comes to be seen in no other light than as basking in the reflected, refracted, light of the spiritual and administrative centre of that eighth wonder of the world on Mt. Carmel I will feel I have made a useful, albeit microcosmic, contribution to civilization as it was going through one of its greatest climacterics, perhaps the greatest and most aweful in the history of humankind. -Ron Price, “ A Retirement-New Direction Prose-Poem,” Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 2005.

[RonPrice]

Someone whose name/username was lyjj1229 posted what in Latin is called a "non-sequiter." That is, the post seemed to have no relation with what went before, with my original post. The moderators here removed that post. This posting of non-sequiters happens on the internet and in life and by the time one gets to the age of 65 as I have--one gets used to it. Indeed, it is a strong part of conversation everywhere I have lived.-Ron