On a high mountain, we visited the temple of the white dome.
First, green everywhere, rows of fruit trees, periodic turn-ins to old country stores, each one the same—rusting door hinges creak of old voices come and gone. Layers of concealing paint peeling away, showing crude structures. The wood porch, the bench, and on it the ancient native man as if carved from the same tree. The old one’s frozen stare fixes on me. He seems to see my grandmother’s blood—part of him. Does he think me a sign, a child of the lost tribe come home? How long will he sit in wait for signs?
I’ve traveled this road many times as a little child. Does he see me now as he did at first meeting, in mother’s arms with my raven hair? Did his blind stare see my hair change from black to yellow, then to red as I recapitulated then shed ancestral heritage?
Our people have broken nature’s trust, their man made structures falling in polluted dust. Forests of stone casinos replace the spirit ways. The sacred circle is broken, the native ways forgotten.
I stare back at the old one, I want to tell him the children of the fire circle have spiraled up—come with me to the cosmic temple that opens to the sky, where we can see to follow their light.
The road climbs in hairpin curves; just two of us follow it today. We are alone, not pushed by the daily rush, and we go slowly. At each turn we take in wider vistas, the lime green of the valley, hills thick with tree brush, the mountains tops covered with velvet green pines. Even the far silver sea sparkles on the distant horizon.
Mountain sun rays, gifted to us by the winter Gods, our hosts, light the temple’s white dome. At night the white spherical eye will open and gather the light from billions of suns clustered in galaxies 1000 millions light years in the deep.
Galaxies magnified, collapse the space between the eye and God—I’m through the telescopic star gate, my personal histories vanish as if mere hallucinations born from toxic earth fumes.
Far below toward the cities the blanket of earth-light hides the holy stars of endless space, but here the light is focused, clear. My visual leap extends beyond the dot of earth’s star, a faint radiance among his galactic brothers, and an invisible atom in our galactic trinity.
Back at the white dome, green everywhere, down through the trees, past far vistas, past the old native—the world is closer than before, yet more distant and strange. I see not only the trees of Earth, but the trees of many Earths. The clouds echo nebula from far off worlds; the vistas are mirrors of landscapes beyond our sun. I look through the blue sky and I know that beyond the cold of space is hidden the warmth of countless bright and living worlds.
