There is also a commonality or oneness present
with the hawk as both subject and hawk share the
same beginning and meet the same ends "When
the mind dies of its time…it is not the place that
goes away" In "A permanence" Blackburn again
deals with nature as an eternal recurring force,
although in this case separate from humanity. The
seven-star constellation of the bear "is there /even
in the day when we do not see him". Separation
and unity with nature are again confronted in the
poem "Light" "My thought drifts like the sea/No
grip between it and my act". Here is a quasi-
epistemological ascension, nature remains
enigmatic. Blackburn deals with the shamanic
themes of transcendence and the supernatural in
"how to get through reality", he summons the
temporal and the divine, "those who work with
us/who create us from stone". This animism does
not question who the creator is but nevertheless
posits the "mediation" as a source of healing. It is
common for the shaman to summon the
"ancestors" and this is what Blackburn does in his
"Journeying" even if he does not explicitly name
these "guardian spirits".
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