Stop now for one minute. Say a silent prayer of thanks for your life. Pain will pass. Joy will remain. – Paulo Coelho
I will have become like
to see the moon
in the window,
the hawk
I saw tracing the cliff edge
above the river.
I will be the man
I have pursued all along
and finally caught.
I will be
all my intuitions
and all my desires
and then I will walk
slowly down the steps
as if dressed in white
and wade into
the water for
a second baptism.
I will be like
someone who cannot
hide their love
but
my joy will become ordinary
and everyday
and like a lover
I will find out
exactly what it is like
to be the happiest, the only one
in creation
to really
understand how much,
I’m just
a hair’s breadth
from dying.
who haven’t lived through these months here
of cold, shoveling snow, shoveling more
snow, living in box canyons of snow,
under worried roofs, dripping walls,
chipping ice, walking stiff-kneed on ice,
dressing complicatedly for every sojourn,
the layers, the precautions, things matted,
frozen shut, the dark skies,
skies continually falling, dark,
if you haven’t looked out windows
trying to remember what a yard looks like,
trying to guess where the ground is,
longing for green, longing for smells,
longing to walk across grass, to be outside
and not hurt, longing for something
to be easy—do you know this yearning
for light, for warmth, for beauty, for release,
do you know this ache?
I believe you know it
with or without the metaphor in your yard.
It’s the ache for the new world,
for the old life to close its winter eye,
the ice grave to crack wide open,
for your true self to walk toward you
out of the darkness. It’s the ache
for freedom, the long, dark ache for Easter.
It’s not a bad thing
to live in the longing, with even grace
not merely laid at your feet yet,
not of your doing, but purely gift.
To know you are waiting,
and what you are hungry for.
And how deep is your longing.
And that it is coming.
Today is the first day of spring.
The forecast is for snow.
I am filled with hope.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
life: acoustic & amplified 