In This Darkest of Nights, Love Came
1
Everywhere I look, a darkness is spreading,
carried on waves of coercion,
waves of hatred and anger,
carried on waves of fear.
It feels as if there is a strange momentum
come to haunt the whole of it all,
something surreal, become a madness
with no one left unaffected,
no one who does not stand within its tidal wave.
It is so easy now to turn away,
to draw lines between ourselves
and others,
to draw lines across our hearts,
so easy now to allow fear
to become a way of living,
to allow fear to become our life,
so very easy now
to mistake the darkness of coercion
for the coming of the light.
2
can you feel the waves of hatred,
the waves of anger and condemnation?
can you feel the waves of fear?
do you wonder where they will take you?
do you wonder what kind of life
they are shaping,
what kind of world they will create?
In this darkest of nights, love came
and asked of me these questions:
gently love came,
and I could not turn myself away.
3
We give to the darkness a power
it does not possess
when we allow its full weight
to bear down upon us,
when we allow it to become our life.
Darkness gives the illusion of sanity
to so much that is not sane.
In that way, it seeks a future that will do
its bidding, accommodate its needs.
It thrives in the lust
for wealth and power,
thrives in our intolerance,
in our hatred and our fear.
It will not thrive forever.
No illusion can.
What we sow grows naturally
and will reveal itself to us,
entwined within our lives,
within the world we are creating,
entwined within the lives
of all those yet to come.
They are never separate from us,
those who will follow,
nor are they yet betrayed:
in every thought, in every action,
we reach out to them,
in every moment, we touch their lives.
When they look back to all we have done,
to all we have given to them,
will they see our hands filled with ashes?
Will they see our hands filled with light?
4
Everywhere I look, a darkness is spreading,
carried on waves of coercion,
waves of hatred and anger,
carried on waves of fear
and in this darkest of nights
it was love that came to me,
love that would not let me turn away.
Gently love came, and I felt within it
the power to transfigure,
the strength to stand within the waves:
you are the vessel, love whispered,
you are the alchemist
all that enters you need not remain unchanged
Come Now, as a Plea
1
Take all you can grasp
with no thought or concern
for those in need
and they will gather
like shadows around you.
You will have to build walls
high and strong enough
to keep them away.
Take another’s freedom
and you will be enslaved
by the need to control them.
Put them in chains
and the weight they carry
will wear you to the bone.
Take another’s life
and their death will not leave you.
Take it without remorse,
without the pain of conscience,
and the emptiness within you
will be your own grave.
I do not write these words
to point in judgment
or condemnation.
I write them that they might
live within me.
I write them as a prayer.
2
Our humanity lies fallow
in the absence of compassion.
Fallow in our lies and deceptions,
in our thoughtless disregard
of so many lives.
It calls to us so clearly now
from the darkness of the furrows,
long past the time of turning away—
in every breath, in every heartbeat,
the grace of its reflection,
the deep urgency of its plea:
no seed can take root
without warmth in the soil,
no garden can grow without light
what was once fertile can erode and harden
become dry as a well without water
empty as the husk of a seed.
In Just This Way
For Karen
early this morning
the red bird came with its song
as you have come to me
these many years since your passing
our lives woven through
by an invisible and rhythmic thread
it is not that I am privileged
I simply gave to you
all that I was
and in that surrender
began to silence the lies within me
I want to open to this morning
as I opened to you—
in just this way
I want to know my life
in just this way
I want to know the red bird’s song:
to breathe it in
to breathe it out
Late Last Night
late last night, wind-blown clouds
across a winter sky:
such a fragile thing,
to feel the presence of beauty in this world,
to allow it to live within us
alone, in the moonlit darkness
it can be enough to open to the night,
to wait, silent and empty
as the temple bell
and in the morning, the pure silence of the light
the luminous swell of clouds
on a distant blue horizon.
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image: Pixabay
