FIRST STEP:
“…I yearned to know how could our image fit
Into that circle, how could it conform;
but my own wings could not take me so high—
then a great flash of understanding struck
my mind, and suddenly it’s wish was granted.
At this point power failed high fantasy
but, like a wheel in perfect balance turning,
I felt my will and my desire impelled
by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”—Dante Alighieri, “Paradise,” Canto XXXIII, lines 137-145.
In the Divine Comedy, Dante’s Purgatory is a seven Storey mountain that becomes easier to climb as one moves nearer to its peak (and entry into Paradise). With each new story, a sin—which is really only Love misdirected—is refined and returned to its virtue. In the losing of our sins, our burden is lessened and our climb made easier. In Purgatory, the hardest and most difficult level is it’s base, where we delay and put off the single decision that changes it all: our decision to begin our climb and transformation.
We all have a beginning point. Maybe it stands out. Maybe it is lost in a life of decisions and all we see is the end state to where it leads us. Either way, we all have a beginning, the first decision and step to seek where it is we desire to arrive and what it is we desire to become.
That is what this poem is about.