Everybody wants to [turn]
& Make the most of [sadness]
Everybody wants to [sleep]
& Make the most of [power]
Everybody wants to [fade]
& Make the most of [desire]
Everybody wants to [rule]
& Make the most of [nature]
Everybody wants to [last]
& Make the most of [indecision]
Everybody wants to [believe]
& Make the most of [isolation]
We are
A date in time, an image-bearer
from god-dust
We are
boxes in the garage
ashes in an urn
We are
charmed fragments of memory
carbon copies clinging closely
We are
cramped names bereft
girded loins and fathomless bleak pangs
We are
out of the blue
& into the black
We are
blood bonds of ancestor landslides
turned into lineages
We are
gone before a blink
faded grass and mist vanishing
We are
rotted out
burned husk of rust
We are
not a failure, my son
when the salt has not yet dried
on your cheeks
and you've found a collapse in your chest
of all your bravery
and hope seems so fragile
from breaking and mending
repeatedly
and all you want
is to see your enemy
kneeling down
in their garden
harvesting for their grandchildren
All we are
cells of mitochondria
composite of galaxies
resting within infinite
e x p a n s i o n to finite expression
To imagine imagination
fathoming, dreaming, sensing
seeing the invisible
what does not exist
calling into existence
This Creator created
attuned
endowing life
processes, systems
beauty
Perceiving
the delight
of watching a story unfold, characters
who will live out the questions
invited into partnership; shalom
How the winter dormancy wraps
land in cold blankets, frozen foundations
leafless trees and hibernating debris
How the spring awakens
there is a thawing, a washing
seeds and creatures roused into fecundity
How being loved by someone changes you
There is an enclosure, a security of boundaries
Now I don't have to do everything, fled from the rancorous mob
Permission that I seldom granted myself
"be present and be loved"
initiate and respond with deepening wholeness
It will take time,
and it's a process of becoming
in the flux of dismantling
into a formless mass
identity shifts,
cocooned and unseeing
reformed
in newness
from darkness, alight
To be a lithe fishing boat,
Curvaceous, turning with the rises
Arcing brow,
Luscious aged wood crafted with care
Dropping and lifting, so unlike
A barge,
Slow, heavy, groping the sediment and debris not yet dredged
Leaving in the tailwind a trail of oil
I want to have a brow that dips sways
I want to have a mast that catches the wind
But I have a motor and I have a mission; port to port to port.
At sighted land unburdened;
I’ll pretend that the small waves can move me too.