I do

For the past
For my own path
For surprises.

For mistakes that worked so well.
For tomorrow if I'm there.
For the next real thing.

Then for carrying it all
Through whatever is necessary,
For following the little god who speaks only to me.
--William Stafford

A silent cloud hangs about me huge with portend but I cannot see into or through it. Ominous. Motivating--but which way? I am ready for it though. Poised for the turning of a heavy stone. Letting loose a lodged boulder.

Burdened. How strange to have come to this. The many small obligations that keep me moving through each day. Busy little human things. Irrelevant tasks and chores. Shopping, cleaning, mending, feeding. I long for change to slam the door on this route and start a new way. I long to abandon all these things that cling to me and clutter my life. They demand my servitude. Ropes and strings that make me stumble when I try to walk. I am well bruised.

I am no stranger to disappointment. Music that did not sing as it should have, a marriage that left me heavy & broken, my son's struggle with the educational system and his own self perception, my father's failures to my mother and their combined failure to me, the mediocrity and debt of the working world; the cumulations of expectation & frustration that all fall into the dark maw of disappointment.

All I can do is sigh. I know this earth is no heaven. Oh how I hate to retreat into a clouded lustre of shell when my senses have been atingle with the spark of life and light. Full hilt of experience.

I want a chance to take the path again. To make the near misses hits. To make the wiser choices rather than those sodden by alcohol or lust. Lacking that retrospective alchemy, it will need to be forward in change.

Waxwings clustered about the water bowl. Social birds. Silk tails in the silk tree keening & flashing. They're talking mulberries already. Someone knows something about spring. Ask the dog whose fur molts off in soft drifts. The fat green bulb heads threateningly huge blossoms to burst forth.

I do take you despite all arguments against it. Despite the cloud of unknowing that lies before it. I do believe in this immutably powerful emotional garden that endures against all odds, beyond all reason and bears such nourishing fruit.

Is this what it is like to love god? So hard that it hurts? How can you live your life in love with the intangible? With dumb hope for the myth of awakening and resurrection. Hope sustains us. It raises us above the mundane and ugly truth of our lives.

I DO