Anam Cara

And what is truly near

Becomes distant and ghostly,

And you are visited

And claimed by a simplicity

Sinister in its singularity,

No longer yourself, your mind

And will owned and steered

From elsewhere now,

You would sacrifice anything

To dance once more to the haunted

Music with your fatal beloved

Who owns the eyes of your heart.

These words of blessing cannot

Reach, even as echoes,

To the shore of where you are,

Yet may they work without you

To soften some slight line through

To the white cave where

Your soul is captive.

May some glimmer

Of outside light reach your eyes

To help you recognize how

You have fallen for a vampire.

May you crash hard and soon

Onto real ground again

Where this fundamentalist

Shell might start to crack

For you to hear

Again your own echo.

That your lost lonesome heart

Might learn to cry out

For the true intimacy

Of love that waits

To take you home

To where you are known

And seen and where

Your life is treasured

Beyond every frontier

Of despair you have crossed.

FOR FAILURE

The will of color loves how light spreads

Through its diffusions, making textures subtle,

Clothing a landscape in concealment

For color to keep its mysteries

Hidden from the unready eye.

But the light that comes after rain

Is always fierce and clear,

And illuminates the face of everything

Through the transparency of rain.

Despite the initial darkening,

This is the light that failure casts.

Beholden no more to the promise

Of what dream and work would bring.

It shows where roots have withered

And where the source has gone dry.

The light of failure has no mercy

On the affections of the heart;

It emerges from beyond the personal,

A wiry, forthright light that likes to see crevices

Open in the shell of a controlled life.

Though cruel now, it serves a deeper kindness,

Wise to the larger call of growth.

It invites us to humility

And the painstaking work of acceptance

So that one day we may look back

In recognition and appreciation

At the disappointment we now endure.

FOR GRIEF

When you lose someone you love,

Your life becomes strange,

The ground beneath you gets fragile,

Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;

And some dead echo drags your voice down

Where words have no confidence.

Your heart has grown heavy with loss;

And though this loss has wounded others too,

No one knows what has been taken from you

When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret

For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;

Again inside the fullness of life,

Until the moment breaks

And you are thrown back

Onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,

You are able to function well

Until in the middle of work or encounter,

Suddenly with no warning,

You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.

All you can depend on now is that

Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.

More than you, it knows its way

And will find the right time

To pull and pull the rope of grief

Until that coiled hill of tears

Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance

With the invisible form of your departed;

And when the work of grief is done,

The wound of loss will heal

And you will have learned

To wean your eyes

From that gap in the air

And be able to enter the hearth

In your soul where your loved one

Has awaited your return

All the time.

FOR THE INTERIM TIME

When near the end of day, life has drained

Out of light, and it is too soon

For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline

Makes everything look strangely in-between,

Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.

In a while it will be night, but nothing

Here seems TO believe the relief of dark.

You are in this time of the interim

Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;

The way forward is still concealed from you.

“The old is not old enough to have died away;

The new is still too young to be born.”

You cannot lay claim to anything;

In this place of dusk,

Your eyes are blurred;

And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart

And you can see nowhere to put your trust;

You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.

Do not allow your confusion to squander

This call which is loosening

Your roots in false ground,

That you might come free

From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,

And it is difficult and slow to become new.

The more faithfully you can endure here,

The more refined your heart will become

For your arrival in the new dawn.

FOR BEAUTY

As stillness in stone to silence is wed,

May solitude foster your truth in word.

As a river flows in ideal sequence,

May your soul reveal where time is presence.

As the moon absolves the dark of distance,

May your style of thought bridge the difference.

As the breath of light awakens color,

May the dawn anoint your eyes with wonder.

As spring rain softens the earth with surprise,

May your winter places be kissed by light.

As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance,