A Blessing for a Short-sighted World
December, my birthday month and I am inundated with gestures of care and affection that makes it easy to express gratitude. Gratitude, the distance between me and suffering. I wanted to say thank you loudly and started writing, before quickly finding myself stuck. It felt frivolous, that is to say I felt frivolous, writing about gifts and cake and joy during this period of dismay on this hurting planet of ours. So, I stopped, and instead I sat on my meditation cushion and expressed quiet gratitude for all that I could name. I realised what I wanted, the only thing I want, is to share a blessing with the world, and a poem is another way to say thank you.
I believe in words
keys capable of unlocking
a myopic view of a world
split off from itself
when nothing could be further
from the truth
my truth that is our pain
as a human body cannot be separated out
and what dehumanises me
dehumanises you
my truth is that
until all is well, none will rest
and where I used to pray
I now breathe
in proxy for those that are able
to key into this frequency
unvoiced may these words
you come upon here unfreeze
us from our terror
open doors to our healing
may these words
allow us to come back
into our bodies
at the very site
of our former shattering
may these words enable us
to appraise the debris
of a former life
and truly see that our hurt
rage and fear were valid
may these words bear the weight
of our disconnected bodies
calibrate our sight
that we may see the improbable
may these words
make the pain unmanageable
force us to excavate the rot
plant groves in its place
may these words engage our pain by new names
call triumph the self that we have always been
may these words break us
out of our tortured sleep
rock us ungently awake
cloistered as we are
in the arms of Life
may these words know
that now we are able
to feel, we will continue
yes, continue
yes, continue to breathe.
