Below the Lower Edge

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

Of course a man can engineer a trance

Inside his mind, a chemical event

Within synapses.  He has every chance—

As history, the saints and mystics went

There now and then—and so we know that’s true.

These facts are so compelling that we see

Results that thrill us.  This compulsion crew—

Teresa and Saint Francis—make us free

To realize at second-hand the views

And triumphs far beyond our earth-bound sights

On Tuesday afternoons.  The holy clues

From sacred ones lift up to hymning heights.

  But most of us are trapped without saints’ chems.

    We cannot even touch the hallowed hems.

~ Phillip Whidden