Whatever immortality was, it couldn't have
Been as wondrous as the early praise hymns
Made it out to be. People with a hold
On a miracle might have been forced
To share with other people, by other people,
But would have been unlikely to lose it.
Accept no substitutes for the one true God,
I was often told, but a variety of candidates
For the title, a passel of somas and haomas,
Ahuras and devas, angels and devils,
And prophets and buddhas and saviors
Made me suspect that those who told me
To accept no substitutes were all peddling
Substitutes they'd accepted. Still, down
Among the prickly pear and Mormon Tea,
Knowing nothing I could ingest, nor fungus
Nor moonflower nor peyote, would do
The full divinity, I wondered about true soma,
What it might have been, what imaginations
Made of it based on the weak medicine
The actual world offered them: unknown
And argued over to the day I thought
Of it among the Arizona weeds, what a drink
That actually did come in the form of deity,
That transformed suffering into ecstasy, life
Spent dying into immortality, what a dream
Capable of everything the hymns sang of it
Would mean for present company. I stood,
Who could barely rise, into sunlight and said,
I have gone to the light, I have got the gods,
I have been set free in wide space, I have
Extended my life through sky and space,
I have summoned my helpers and shone,
As the hymn translators have written for me.
A soulful cow with a tag on each ear nearly
Stumbled over me, my body and immortality.
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