If the truth can set us free let’s seek it,

turn upside down our boxes of heaviness

and bore into them with eyes of hawks, golden orbs

that clarify options and magnify treasure.

May we find the dense, throbbing heart of matters.

Leave the rest, let it float past birch and cedar.

It costs too much to gather little lies into a deep nest

and avoid questions that are thorns; they burrow in.

Don’t these times leave us breathless? Humans can disguise

even deception with more that cannot be well undone.

Who do we fool? Who among us offers a story

that does not sweat, embrace and bleed?

Even the mighty. And the meek, no denial.

These times have hurt forgotten ones, small ones.

Have torn from us choices to go this way or that,

when before we sailed through what we thought

the good life, simpler truths bright as doves about us.

Flight comes badly to those who close their eyes.

And who too often doubt: checking too far below

obscures the way.

Have we forgotten the value and costs of freedom?

We can fall in a blink, inelegant. Faint. Clumsy with fear.

But rise up, step forward do not slide, slither backward.

It is shouldering into the next storm that we often do

with our bundles of longing to lift up in prayer.

Harboring anger whiplashed on our tongues, we soon

blame others, forgetting what is built in us.

A deeper core. Rare human energy: impetus for growth.

Such courage can reveal us, inches closer to victory.

We can more than endure, even make anew.

Discover a potency of humility, that alchemy of soul

and mind that brings change with no dishonor, no disregard.

This life is near weightless.

Lived so short: a circuitous day and night.

We were born whole. We can meld riven parts into one.

Can we live like a steady flame, even in and out

of the maw of coming upheavals?

We have before; we can do so now. Tomorrow.

Look, here I am beside you; you, beside another;

he/she/they/we, yet another.

Purge mouths of hate, elicit no rancor.

May we speak from our lightness, and no burdensome lies.

Easier goes the journey with shining eye,

willing feet, wings spread. We will sail.

What is once sought in earnest is more than twice gained.

Above photos, Cynthia Guenther Richardson