It

It May 2, 2016

IT

 

First It was a woman with auburn hair

whose head would moan when I’d kiss her neck.

Then It was a game where despite the others

I would rise in the air and toss the ball

as if it were all that mattered of me

and I’d only feel complete when it

slipped the net, touching nothing,

just falling blissfully from the sky.

Then It was a solitude that overwhelmed

me, on a mountain, or lingering by a brook

longer than the others. Or talking for hours

till the words were strewn like clothes and

there was nothing to repeat. And then It was

Grandma wearing down to a precious set of bones

and I made pilgrimage to hear her secrets once

she could no longer speak. And when you went

into surgery, I fogged the sliding doors,

watching your stretcher grow smaller,

believing It was thinning there

between us. But now, I am rightfully

tired of the chase and It has changed,

as have I, from something outside of us

we reach for, to something that was deep

within all along. I’ve stopped asking

for things to emulate, have stopped pushing.

Some say I am getting old. Even so, I can’t

find the words in stream or sky to make clear

what I’ve found. Just stay near long enough

and my eyes will tell and we will both

let down, unsure what to do next. This

is a sign. For It is here, in us as we

bend. Oh how this life unfolds, just

one concentric womb enroute to another,

each encompassing the last; the labor

before us, our tunnel to the future;

the film covering our eyes, torn

away slowly, as we form inwardly,

no longer able to pretend.

 

A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a friend or loved one, talk about one way you see now that you were blind to earlier in your life.

tunnel

Sounds True recently published a new, expanded edition of Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, which gathers twenty-eight years of my writing and teaching about suffering, healing, and wholeness, including thirty-nine new poems and prose pieces not yet published. One of the great transforming passages in my life was having cancer in my mid-thirties. This experience unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths. With a steadfast belief in our aliveness, I hope what’s in this book will help you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged. It is an excerpt from the book.


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