A Poem: For Grace

Published on my niece Grace's birthday and dedicated with love to all members of my extended family, but particularly my father and mother. A heartfelt thank you to my family and my many teachers, both experiences and people, for their contributions to my life which do not go unrecognized. Namaste.

She knew heaven.

It touched and moved her,

Air around her arms,

earth beneath her feet.

Years passed as days might pass.

Clouds drifted across skies,

Sometimes cirrus wisps,

sometimes, after the great storms of summer,

Pillars of cumulus, colored in the pinks and yellows

Of sunrise and sunset.

Some days fog wrapped her in warm humidity

And there were times of pure heat from days of sun.

There was night and the waxing and waning of moons.

She watched sparks flicker in the air and earth,

Listened to the humming movements

of insects

and creatures

That chattered in unknown languages.

Leaves rustled in whispers

that traced movements under brittle cover

and further

Delved into the decaying detritus.

She knew these,

not by their names,

But by their innocence. There was beauty.

There was suffering.

Not being separate from either,

she knew neither

In it's separate forms.

The distinctions we might hew and tender

were absent,

And her eyes tendered a calm

no vision or wind could ripple.

She grew from the ground in a reversal of eons

that weighted tedious.

An accumulation of sand and pebble

and ragged shards of rock

Burned and molted back into wholeness -

the fragments of our exiles

Reunited in cosmic glistening.

What was it that bore and birthed her

from everlastingness?

Of us, for us, her longing

that she could not sing the rightness of it,

The way the birds could sing,

picking up where they left off

After each passing storm.

So slowly, in years or moments,

she lifted that weight

and constricted her abdomen,

Breathing in and directing the shape that she was up,

first whispering,

then a hum,

And then deepening the vibration

until the hum became a note, a lullaby,

a blessing.

To rise and rising,
first buffeted, then carried

on that great wind, ever towards us, that rose,

no longer becalmed, but at peace.