Lingering
Glory
Lingering
Glory
Glow yet held clear and bright
Deep within a tempered heart
A compass knows the way to north
Light, the steel by which love reckons
Ever should the dark engulf
I shall find my way
Illumined by the rose within
No shadow may diminish
Night gives way to morning
Clouds soon enough are lifted
To the souls of seeking hearts
Horizon always beckons
Is there nothing quite so extraordinary
As a gathering of the confused
The bewildered
The shocked
All finding comfort and strength
Through others no stronger than we
We discover
In our collective strength
And courage
And wisdom
And tenacity
How much of these
We each ourselves posses
Armed with them
We super humans of faith
And possibility
We master what was unmasterable
We triumph when tragedy seemed certain
Oh, we magnificent beings
Who would ever suspect
We were capable of such things
When observing ourselves
In just the everyday?
None but ourselves
But that is all we need remember
Patience is the desert
Eons shaped it
Storms come and go
Then desert returns to itself
Desert surprises
Not always hard sun and heat
Comfortable in the cold grey
Vivid hues follow a spring rain
Lifeless seems the desert
Lively to those who choose to see
Quiet in harmonious balance
Patient, resilient, and supple
But feel the beckoning
Which stirs my being
As if ’twas yesterday
Ancestral tribes departed her for land
Peace besets me
In this dwindling hour of daylight
Content with the cool darkness to come
The surf
The gulls
The sand
The wind
The sky
The emptiness of a beyond
Reaching further
Than the distant horizon
But there is no such sea here
So when I want the sea
I draw a slow, very deep
Breath in
Close my eyes
And release
Slowly
The breath
And my presence
Here
Now
Release my presence
Begin to breathe deeply
I listen for the waves
And hear them
In time with my breath
I listen for the gulls
And hear them
My thoughts glide away on their wing
I scrunch my toes in the sand beneath my feet
And feel it between them
Grounded, solid as the Earth
I open my chest to the wind
And it washes over my body
Filling my lungs, my being with life
I raise myself up to the sky
And bask in the warm sunlight
It feeds the light within
I am transported there
To the shore of the sea
I release
All that is not this moment
Let it take wing
Like the gulls
Watch this flock of attachments
Fly beyond the distant horizon
Then disappear behind it
I sit here
With the sea
With the emptiness
In the emptiness
There are only the waves
Which are my breath