~1~

What speaks from the miracle of eyes,

what means the slide of fingers to lips to brow,

three blinks and a limpid gaze averted,

a smile that dazzles with a hot edge of pain

but is mistaken for flash of charisma.

Spunk, congeniality; possible rage behind the teeth.

We are bigger, more than we seem.

It’s hard to find the way into the human core,

so hire life coaches to chareg for advice.

Why let others think for us? The reality is

our differences are minute or grand,

yet we all carry our links of living forward–

a storm of ideas, delights and losses that find us,

the urgent testing of passions,

and collisions of uncertain and pure feelings.

We pull them alongside us with big strides that

could belong to queens and kings of Fate.

As if we command all we touch;

that delusion is made truth.

Do these moments act on our behalf,

move us forward to a prosperous day?

If not, make it happen, just do the work

and know thy enemy–self or others.

But we are not only statistics,

graduates of spa getaways, a wellness class.

And still we interpret and corral time

and its inhabitants, as if on a quest and

failure is mere fiction– or is it an ally–

that must conform to our directives.

All this is that–a quest. More than a lesson.

Every story has one unfolding, dubious until defining,

and we want more so gather clues,

follow one page, one day to the next.

To see who wins, needing it to be us.

~2~

Belonging is the desire. Basic understanding.

If not that, then a rich salve of compassion.

Arms extending and encircling, pressing close,

a reminder we are worth at least that much

and in need of a filling up.

Watch, then, for the grace of it, an overflowing,

a healing spillage that calms the cry

of next in need, a common spring of love.

If only it was easy, a quick cure of a surface wound.

Clean, bandage, a good dose of patience,

no scar to betray the rude scrape.

No deeper moans to muffle, to haunt a heart.

The most egregious things are boxed,

and mostly unforgiven, left to fester.

How much we can do without, past hurts

tethered to bitterness.

If only every soul’s journey could be noted.

If every breaking warring lost quaking

heart-tattered soul-bruised human passing through

this world knew the liberation of

the spirit’s eye, the mind’s wisdom

seeing through obfuscation.

Seeing her and his and their clear center.

Hope could hold up many more weary.

I say it matters, and it has to matter more.

You have not been seen, you believe, but

when a sudden light is beamed by another

at your trueness, it changes things, for though you

may be a stranger it is an intimate awakening.

It is a connection made across a twilit street,

along rutted paths or silvered lake,

the corner bakery and at a mailbox,

humming to yourself on the way home–

there is that moment that makes us pause.

Look. It is there:

the sheen and tarnish of our dreams

and needs glimpsed in one another.

And there arises a finite longing,

bolstered by infinite love that

inhabits this coporeal life,

this gifted sanctuary of who we are.

I am meeting you in a gentle tear in time,

through one door of many, and

say without a word, I see and welcome you

and will believe you find it true.

Through the macrocosm of a universe,

we came here as if meant to come,

to become more,

may it be so.

Because of this, in this way I will

know and love the seeker,

the beloved, essential you.

And then let us pass on the welcome

and its lifesaving blessing,

its uncommon jolt of joy.