A New…and Different…Poem by Jason Ryan Morton

This new poem by Jason Ryan Morton is–based on all the stuff of his that I’ve read and analyzed–quite a departure. His words are in italics to distinguish them from mine, as usual. Here’s the poem:

In the light of the moon
Pale reflections of Adoration
Enjoy the oceanic saturation
Drinking in beauty of the Goddess three
My love – my heart
The soul of me cries out to touch your lips
With a ghost of a kiss
Brushing my life within your heart
A truth of the dawn heralding a new light
I slowly blend with you into one form
Thus an eclipse is born.

And now for my analysis.

Normally, Jason’s writing is full of themes of despair and trauma, but here we see him adoring beauty and light. Instead of irreverence to religion, and denial of belief in God (a male god, mind you), we have an affirmation of the Divine Feminine, presumably in a metaphorical sense.

He’s looking up to the moonlight and admiring its beauty. The moonlight reflects his “Adoration” back to him; note the capitalizing of Adoration, suggesting that it’s his love that does the deifying. We send out love, and love gratefully comes back to us.

I really like the assonant music of this line: “Enjoy the oceanic saturation.” One feels saturated with the divine beauty surrounding us and passing within us, a connection with the oceanic universe. One is “drinking in,” internalizing the natural beauty all around, the beauty of the Triple Goddess.

He is in love with the moon goddess, wanting to kiss her glowing lips. The “ghost of a kiss” brushes his life, which is within her heart, for inside her heart is where his life and happiness lie.

“A truth of the dawn heralding a new light” seems to indicate that he has found new vitality and hope from her, a vitality and hope to replace the despair and trauma he wrote about before. He would “blend with [her] into one form,” like Atman discovering its identity with Brahman, and finding peace in moksha.

Now, “an eclipse is born” with this blending of him with her into one form. Such a blending suggests that Jason is identifying himself with the sun, since not only is there a solar eclipse, the result of the moon passing in front of the sun; but also since the moonlight is a reflection of the sunlight off of it. If he is identifying himself with the sunlight, then that sunlight can be seen to represent the fiery passions, which are calmed when absorbed by the moon, like a loving mother soothing her agitated baby.

But could the “eclipse” be a case of “love is blind”? Could the moon be driving Jason lunatic; does her mesmerizing beauty block his ability to see straight, to give and receive his solar light? Is this why “Adoration” is capitalized, the deification of his love projected onto her, rather than she herself deified? Is this the meaning of “the dawn heralding a new light,” that his new vitality and hope come not from her, but from his idealizing of her in his mind? Is his love for her real, or is it an illusion?

I’ll leave you, Dear Reader, to decide whether his love of the moon is real or delusional, whether it is good for him or not.