chaos, refuge

My stories have dried up
as all things must
to be scattered, untraceable, from their source.

Let them be.

With them go the details of my life
that when called upon are reformed and reinterpreted.
What was will always be obscured by what is.
The past is not alive- it cannot be revived with breath or the desperate
heart compressions.
We search our memory for the lines of the dearest face,
the exact tone of the voice we will never again hear.

We cannot keep anything we love. But as long as we are here,
we break our bread and share our beds, we give broth
and nurse one another through sickness, and we hope for more time.
This is all we have, and it is never enough.

There was a time when I was moved by tragic love,
but I have had my fill of tragedy. What is truly precious
is the love that rebuilds after tragedy, setting the cairn over ruins.

Chaos has been our mother, and we have been given that which is too precious to willingly pass on. “To let the mortal world be enough"- a challenge we each must each stare bewildered in the eyes.

I am here and I have so much to give. May we be a refuge
to everything that lives.

slippery fish

Life, what are you?   You are a strange bird indeed; a slippery fish.  Sometimes you are an unruly great-aunt, wielding chaos in your elegant sleeve.  You are love so entangled with fear that I cannot pull the two apart. And something I cannot name- the eternally impermanent paradox; indiscriminately beautiful everywhere, tight lipped as a martyr.

fearless

You don’t have to bow to a conceived Creator

to fall to your knees before creation.

You do not need to sing the Hymns from a book

or read another man’s words

to see yourself in the World.

Let the pages filled with Holy rules curl with age,

Your life is your own.

You may ask yourself the difficult questions and not find

an Absolute.

You may stand in the sun and feel that this moment is a miracle,

inexplicably,

without attributing the miracle to any entity.

You can wonder freely,

you can examine the stories of your life without fear,

you can be bewildered and humbled by the mysteries.

Some will offer you answers in exchange for your wonder;

they will impose regulations on your questions and your beliefs,

they will impose regulations on your choices.

They have no power except that which you give them,

but their promises of destruction and salvation will turn your heart to stone.

Look again. There is no salvation except the one you already know, to stand in the sun and know

that it is a miracle to stand in the sun.