Aristocracy of Spirit

Back when I was a cricket cricketeering

chirrup cheer-up chirrup! –

I assumed in insectival innocence

an inner sense that there exists an aristocracy

which has no truck with densities of provenance

or centuries of family or fancy balls or noses

held up in disdain, to which the best souls

in the cosmos gladly train their hearts

and heads to pledge allegiance:

an aristocracy of spirit. You know it

when you’re near it. You recognize its members

when you are a member, too: there is no surer

proof of who is in this special realm.

No one’s lording her or his good fortune

over anyone who doesn’t have it; in fact,

quite otherwise: you subtly influence those souls

who never knew that in their deepest being

they belonged: and then, as when

I was a little cricket, suddenly they did.

The aristocracy of spirit blew its lid too long ago

for anyone to have the barest notion

of its genesis. But when the sis-boom-bah of it

resumes its generous hooray, attracting

every soul its way, we lose our thirst for herstory

and history. If we were a church, we’d be

the clerestory: windows looking out onto the sky.

Although thank heavens (if that’s whom to thank)

we’re not a church: that would be a lie.

The aristocracy of spirit likes to undermine

all solemn premises and tends when

in the presence of a vaulted arch to lurch away

and out into the bright and unimpeded day.

Unless it’s cloisonné.

Spiritual aristocrats

(why we cannot say)

slaver over cloisonné.

.