Icon Poem by Frank Avon

I cannot know him, can I?
He will not speak to me.
Yet I am possessed by him;
he's one of my other selves,
someone, I think, I'd like to be:

not my Albion,
a Glad New Day,

not golden Apollo
or a thundering Zeus,

not Gabriel
nor Lucifer before his fall,

not Elijah in his chariot
nor Ezekiel with his wheels,

Orion and his dog,
Pegasus with Bellerophon,

Taurus the onyx bull,
or the rat who wed a dragon,

King Arthur
or Galahad,

no Childe Roland
to the dark tower come,

not Prince Hal or Hotspur
or Hamlet, Prince of Danes,

no Coeur de Lion
or Ethan Allan,

il Trovatore
die Meistersinger

not Paul Bunyan
or Pecos Bill

not Dan'l Boone
or Davy Crockett

not Superman
or Captain Marvel,

not even Elvis
or a Pat Boone,

Bob Cousy
or Pistol Pete,

not even those guys
I idolized,

looking on from the sidelines,
an adolescent, an Outsider

not my persona
nor a Jungian shadow,

a Great Unknown,
the intimate one,

before whom
I prostrate myself

in whom I see myself
when I shall rise,

the actual idealized,
my ideals energized,

maybe Amerika,
a Son of Liberty -

his visage, the Adirondacks,
his shoulders, Appalachia,
his right arm, the Great Lakes,
his left arm, the Florida peninsula,
his ribs, railways,
his abs, the Great Plains,
his heart, the Gateway Arch,
his veins, the Mississippi,
his lower limbs, the Chisholm Trail,
and the voyage of Lewis and Clark,
his knees, Yosemite and Pikes Peak,
his feet, the San Francisco Bay

out of the earth he should arise
riding his mount into the skies
fleeing Armageddon,
facing the seventh heaven,

the climax
to which he aspires

a more perfect union
a New Frontier

He must cast off bonds that bind him,
must recline on a couch of the ether,
must triumph with only his eyes,
must repose in poetry, transform
Rodin's bronze into human flesh.

Still he calls me
from the depths of darkness,
from cycles of silence,
from a distance indeterminate,
Indefinite, nor quite Finite.

Still he calls,
though prideful, even arrogant,
distant and withdrawn,
yes admit it, sultry, sullen,
ultimately Unknowable:

the Unnamed,
the unchained,

prince of darkness,
duke of dawn,

uncrowned, unthroned,
of so many, only one,

after all these years,
one moment golden.