Enter the Dragon
lake above, earth below —> mountain above, earth below
It seems I’m walking down a hall of mirrors to where a humble dragon waits to lead me outside to a gathering of my past selves mingling with an unruly crowd. I approach them and bow.
approached with a bow
I salute my past selves
enter the dragon
This poem masterfully embodies the I Ching's transition from Hexagram 45 to 23, using a syllabic structure of 8-8-8-9-9-6 to physically enact the shift from stable Earth to the changing lines of the Lake trigram. The "unruly crowd" of active Yang energy (the 9s) is ultimately dissolved by the final Old Yin line (the 6), where the narrator's bow triggers the necessary "Splitting Apart" of past identities. Through this precise fusion of numerology and imagery, the work demonstrates that true integration of the self requires the courageous yielding that allows old forms to crumble and make way for the new.