POEM

I’ve sat in the sacred blur of both embodied and imagined birth and death…

In their real and imagined awe-inducing-ness

And I have yet to have a preference of the doorway in or the doorway out. They both bring grief and me to my knees in their simplicity and grace, regardless of their interpreted glory, horror or rightness.

They both knock down and blaze through the door of the great mystery, brazenly impersonal in their punchings in and punchings out

It is Life itself that both mystifies and satisfies and shakes this soldier soul

For birth is but a welcome (in some cases) and death is but a tearful kiss goodbye (in some cases) but life….the adventure birthed of the essential seeds….

Is an elevator, a circus, a held breath, a bath, a shock, a rudeness, a will-full falling asleep, a sigh, a delicate map of a crazed relief and un-lived or wildly sung rapture…

a torture, and a reward, at once

That bounces like an un-mastered ball until it settles into the cradle of awakening.

If it ever does.

The crawling or skipping there are ones of perseverance and removal of cloaks that both its’ entrance into and its’ exit from cannot elude to, even in the miracle of their gestures, whether they be giant exclamation points or quiet bowings in their unique performances

It is the story itself that reduces me to tears and guffaws and god beseechings.

It is this sacred and fat sentence between the large first italic and the trembling of the epilogue’s last word that calls me to it with this fervor and drooling inquiry

A gentle or sawtoothed reminder of how delicate the soil is at the beginning and throughout the many seasons and unpredictable spells

I am moved to see how utterly untouchable and untaint-able the light is, even as we cover it (in most cases?) with soot and spray and damage

This tenacity moves me to wordlessness (although not yet) and reduces its’ beginnings and endings to particular and glowing markers of transition

Ones I bow down to for their purpose, yet stay kneeling for what they hold in their function

Like embered bookends holding the blessed writings: dog-eared and dense and otherworldy in their alien-like gift channelings

It is this that I drool to read and to write, while I humbly tip my hat to its’ dawnings and its’ nights.

–alanis morissette