CHAPTER 1

PRELUDE

Over his keys the musing organist
Beginning doubtfully and far away,
First lets his fingers wander as they list,
And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay:
Then, as the touch of his loved instrument
Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme.
First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent
Along the wavering vista of his dream.

[So begins "The Vision of Sir Launfal," by J.R. Lowell]

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;---
World losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and sakers
Of the world forever it seems.
......
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
......
You shall teach us your song's new numbers
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.

[Beginning&Ending of ODE, by O'Shaughnessy]

--The Illustration is from Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell, The Riverside Press, Boston 1882

ARIEL KEEPS SINGING [homages to Shakespeare's The Tempest]

O O O O O I'm your free spirit that will set us free
We're magical as breath – majestic as liberty.
I'm your free spirit to "bark" The Tree of Life – "Awake, awake!"
"Hark, hark! bowgh-wowgh ... Cry cockadiddle-dow!"
"Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."
So we own our own island on this raging sea.
"O Wonder ... O Brave New World." O O O O O

You free Me – Me free You! -- Me free You — You free Me!
We'll do it together like fiddle and bow;
Let the music take us where we need to go.
We'll chanticleer the tempests and make it home
Rudder & Helm synced like a Palindrome.

We're life's truest love song, you and me.
Together we rhyme the clues of mystery
We're the breath that bellows bold destiny.
Our magic – the lyric poetries of Arias & Symphonies,

As we flow the paint, chisel stone, pen the page:
Virtuosos of passages played to the back seats,
Our Song & Dance staging moves as the heart beats.
So we commit "I go – I go" -- crossing rainbow bridges POEM to POEM;
Past Froth & Foam, find our way Home! HOME to HOME! Ohhhhh!!!

O O O O O I'm your free spirit that will set us free
We're magical as breath – majestic as liberty
I'm your free spirit to "bark" The Tree of Life – "Awake, awake!"
"Hark, hark! bowgh-wowgh ... Cry cockadiddle-dow!"
"Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."
So we own our own island on this raging sea.
"O Wonder ... O Brave New World." O O O O O

So let me fly like the thoughts in your mind Be
our spirit's music that dreams of home; New
dreams in the waking that keep the magic
So, when darks are tragic we don't dream alone.
O O O O O ................Ohhhhh!!!........

We're that Nature Spirit ever-calling to get free --
Sprite, nymph, muse -- airy whisperings from a tree.
"Hark, now I hear them! Ding dong bell!" Oh, well!
Just "when Owls do cry" – Caliban "Cries to dream again" --
Past his origin. – And we, riding Fireflies at Dawn,
Cry "All Aboard" our voyage towards the greater light.
We'll take turns as Wind & Sail steering life's craft;
Tame quandries philosophic clinging to physic's raft;
Fire the Prosperoion hearths for Earthlings all.
We, the brightest spirits this Earth has on call.
O O O O O I'm your free spirt that will set us free.
We're magical as breath – majestic as liberty.
I'm your free spirit to "bark" The Tree of Life– "Awake, awake!"
"Hark, hark! bowgh-wowgh ... Cry cockadiddle-dow!"
"Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."
So we own our own island on this raging sea.
"O Wonder ... O Brave New World." O O O O O
TO OWN OUR OWN ISLAND ON THIS RAGING SEA!

{This composed two years before Harvey-Irma-Jose Hurricanes of 9/2017.}

CHAPTER 2

Dedication

I'm dedicating AUGURIES to my little dog, DaisyDew: a beautiful auburn blend of Dachshund and Pomeranian. After 17 years and 24 days, she was failing in all major faculties, lost hearing, orientation, and vision; lost strength and appetite with developed spinal-internal complexities:17 lbs down to 7. She still had that look of pride and connectivity in her eyes, but no sense of the pain and suffering happening and to come. So frail so fragile! She had even lost her BARK! Utter compassion compelled me to put her to sleep on June 5, 2015. She lived a wonderfully long life of ultimate dogginess until her last year; the last two months were the worst. DaisyDew was more than a "mutt-mongrel" in "our" shared world. She was a "Varielion" -- in transcendence of both breeds.) Well, there are canine as well as human "Varielions." She and I – both Varielions – as from that major life happening of "Varient-Parents." To have that unique self is to transcend being a "mere mongrel." The difference twixt us is my "augur- consciousness" and ability to express-conjur the magics of LEAP of ATALE "Arion-Taliesin-Ariel Lyred Enchantments."

She was born May 11, 1998; thus quite old, but did not know that or that "death" awaited her; could not know that I and the DVM could see the near future, which augured painful deterioration: furthermore, we knew we had no solutions for bringing back the life that was leaving her. She was, in fact, soon to die. Did she know this (existentially) by some creaturely "death instinct?" Perhaps. I know she knew "the magics" had changed. The last look in her eyes, by my interpretation, was that she knew something was happening to "us" that she didn't know how to know, but wanted me to fix it as I always did. [Yeats had a phrase for it, perhaps: "And what if excess love, Bewildered them till they died." --from Easter 1916.]

We, howsoever bewildered by it all, do know how to know the inevitability of death for all life-forms on Planet Earth. That future is crystal clear and we do all we can to plan accordingly: even putting a little dog peacefully-gracefully to an everlasting sleep. I'm sure she was aware of being auto-ontic (a keen sense of "self," pride of accomplishment, and awareness of sympathies) and anthro-ontic (species connectivity, affection: that sense of being with and part of). But, like all creatures (so it seems) except we humans, she did not possess the augur-ontic faculty, thus did not know death was her ultimate destiny: was conscious of suffering, but did not know of what's called the "terror of history" and its birth-throes of "unregenerative time." We humans know of this -- which give us our "causal" identity, our amor fati. She was exempt from both predation and procreation; never a sync with either: mostly, with few interuptions, a dog's "prosperoion."

When I get to the subject of The Prosperioion. I'll explore more the dimensionality of such scintilla animae (sparkings of soul) and the meaning of how WE "in-quiringly-en-choir" to comprehend & covenant with death-in-life/life-in-death. Indeed, it is BECAUSE OF realities such as a DaisyDewDog that we experience Wonders That Should Not Die (WONTSUNODI) and 3-D phenomenons — such as...