Aslan

C.S. it was, who said you were unsafe.
That I should watch, and listen,
laugh as you would leap
upon the rock beside me,
bringing chaos to my ordered life.

I thought old C.S. was a bumbler
when it came to formulating faith
(I would have argued hours with him)
but he knew more of manifesting lions
from a ragged manuscript
and faded memory
than anyone I know of
in a post-enlightened age..

How much of raw perfection in your stance,
creating, singing, warring,
peeling back the false,
and roaring with the pain
of the exposed and wounded truth.
How much beneath your mane,
that childhood vibrance.for the quest,
that archetype of Christ?

You may not leave for me
the luxury of fresh forgetting,
for your heart exudes its life--
not for my sin, instead
my faint, protected passion,
insulated from the blood you shed
in that wild glory on the hill
where death was to your taste alone,
while those less sanguine mortals
ran away in fear.

I still tremble, Aslan. But not for fear of you,
or guilt, or penitence.
I look across the rock, and see myself
within your fiery eyes--the tempest of your breath
upon my tepid skin--
aware that I may never know
the splendor of the vanquished, self-imposed
...that I will never sing, and roar, and die
...and even at the ending, cry...beware!
~