Month: May 2013

The Answer

For Toke

This answer
This search
This elusive entity upon which knowledge attempts to triumph
as a theist reaching epiphany.

This in all of us.

This beast hungering for
answers to questions the natural world never needs to ask.

In seeking the meaning of things
in seeking the meaning of meaning.
This endless relentless pursuit
to capture the ultimate metaphor
upon which somehow everything might turn,
and somehow be held or be understood.

And then within all the pontificating
The blunt fact slaps, that:
There can be no return
to the cocoon
to the cradle
to the womb
to re-curl magically into unknowing pre-form.

And eventually the wisdom to see
and perhaps only after exhaustion,
in the nothing more for it,
in the I’ve got nothing left, of it,
to cease the relentless pursuit,

to live longer in the question

And quite simply
To find the wisdom
To live within what is

and what is becoming.

 

c. 2013 MChallis

If I Am

If I am to say who I am
Let me speak to that which forms me

I choose first to unfurl as the potent flower
a bright identity in the savage garden.
I am the fire of colour. The spectrum and the extraordinary.
For planting, my feet flow deep with sap
and the hungry root takes me down.

Next I break as many waves
Transient currents run unchecked
Fish croon with open mouths the stories I am wound up in
And bare my silver belly wherein the fisher king embeds his gutting knife.

To transform now I am made of sodden loams and grains that once were mountains
Glorious crested tributes made majestic by countless setting suns.
I am sediments and soils on sandy shores.
Roman, Grecian, Chinese nations,  Iroquois and Sioux all make me
My earth is firm. My gravity made for weathering.

Soon I am air and cloud.
Feminine mist timid and fresh as candle fire.
Yet swift and dangerous if called to harry a storm built purpose.
I am the first and the last breath. I am the sigh that carries generations.
Onward, present, bending, softening, opening, ripening into and away from form.

To Find Our Place of Leading

Who will lead us when we do not lead ourselves?
Who will know us when we do not know ourselves?
Who will love us when we do not love ourselves?
Who will trust us when we do not trust ourselves?

None.

When we name what gets in our way of leading.
We find the courage to speak what is true.

When we name what gets in our way of knowing.
We find the wisdom to shape our world.

When we name what gets in our way of loving.
We find the heart open to find the heart.

When we name what gets in our way of trusting.
We find the will to move beyond fear.

We find our place of leading
And others know this
And find it
through us