The Gift

I search and search for ways to say:

“You are alive”

but time and time again

my words fall short.

When she lay dying in that stripped-down room

(but for the tubes)

it felt like we had jumped across a sacred portal

into a Caravaggio 

the way the room was dimly lit

her skin sallow and clammy

I held her hand and wept 

before the future that was now dismantled. 

Her dying wish? To be beside the sea

and feel the echo of the crashing waves

across her body.

Most of the things we think

will bring us joy, do not.

One day you might be counting breaths

as I did

feeling so frantic about the suddenness of death,

but now, while you’re alive

so very much alive

why are you holding back your depths?

Why are you holding back the blossoms of the almond trees

the daisies dancing with the poppies in the fields?

What lies were sung as lullabies

numbing your love, your hope, your vision?

There’s no one I will listen to

no civilised advice 

nobody who will say be good, and nice and small,

a cornish hen stuffed with my unexpressed emotions. 

I lend my ear only to poets and artists

who hold their guide-line

in the dark caves of the soul. 

I gift my voice to friends and dogs

and birds who gift me theirs

and to the world despite the grief

despite the greed.

I rage sometimes, defending boundaries,

upholding sacred vows made to the Self,

even the moon backs up her liquid silver 

while slithering silently across a darkened vault;

slivered or whole, she shows up, brazen at core,

delivering the goods.

I want so much for you to drop the doubts 

and the impostor syndromes,

the guilt and the anxiety.  

Only if we amble down those

sun-kissed afternoons together

to the precipice of Open Heart,

throwing ourselves headlong 

into the laughing billows;

then -only then- i’ll say my job is done.

Then, only then, the gift she gave me

with her wings will soar

(oh mystic’s swirling riddles)

and we be swallow-tailed

and quick like kites

feather and wingbeat

all blood and sinew to the heights

and depths of every moment.

Effortless, even in our grief

we cry as if we’re making love

to God himself.