Artesian Well

In the midst of all of the current political rancor, religious intolerance and horror, and the negative negation of atheism...

Look back to an earlier, more joyful time--



Artesian Well

I can’t carry a basic tune
Anymore than a bat can sing Hebrew
Or envision hieroglyphics,

But once I welled up bursting forth
Beyond all melodious barriers
Of sensuous fountaining,

Songing the voice of all singing.
Hosanna to the Highest and Deepest,
All-embracing universal cosmic Ultimate

Usually, I vocalize low and hestitant
With insecure, stressed effort
But on that humid evened night

In the crowded chapel meeting hall
In the midst of a thousand voiced joyfulness,
I not only caroled the Keys but was mused,

Songing the voice of all singing,
Hosanna to the Highest and Deepest
All-embracing universal cosmic Ultimate

We human instruments, fluting beautifully
One glorious open canticled Magnificat
With so much climatic passion;

Me, a human oboe in a great orchestra of tone
Being Bached and Beethovened,
To the alleluiaed heights,

Songing the voice of all singing,
Hosanna to the Highest and Deepest
All-embracing universal cosmic Ultimate.

Lava-hot harmonied, a chorale of joyous, exultant
Praise, the Spirit’s artesian well bursting forth,
Geysering up in ecstatic adulation,

Welling skyward beyond all measuring
To God, our lover,
So divine.

Songing the voice of all singing,
Hosanna to the Highest and Deepest
All-embracing universal cosmic Ultimate.


Daniel Wilcox

First published in
The Clockwise Cat in different form;
also in poetry collections--Psalms, Yawps, and Howls
and selah river



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox