Part of the point of this series of prose poems is to explore the multi-layered personal meanings of everyday things through discovering some of the multiple associations of the everyday words we use for them. Here, for example, is a mini-meditation on an indispensable comfort and convenience we may take for granted most of the time--a chair.
A CHAIR
hello chair thanks for being there I need a pit stop right now you fit my butt and match my mind yet you're more than just a practical convenience you're a way station at the intersection of time and space a welcome oasis where I can pause rest drink deep from a well of inner reflection standing up I defy mortality lying down I surrender to it but sitting quietly I bridge the worlds of life and death
some chairs are minimalists they say "stop here for a few minutes but don't get too comfortable -- you've little time and much to do" but others croon a siren song they seduce me to sink into their cushiony cocoon and never come out I want an in-between kind of chair one that gentles me down but also props me up I want a chair that's humble modest serviceable that says "I'm ready and waiting just for you"
what about all the people who don't even have a chair to call their own -- no safe corner anywhere with its familiar frame to comfort them and take them in? ignore me if you must but don't steal my chair! you're not just messing with my body you're slapping my soul there might be many other places to sit but there's only one where I know I belong finding the right chair feels a little bit like coming home
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I've always been a sky junkie. Wherever I am outdoors, whatever I'm doing, my eyes invariably lift upward to gaze at the sky. It reminds me of that other Sky shining inside me -- an infinite Spirit which will never die.
SKY
so much of me's stitched together from all the skies I've breathed never have any two shined the same it's as if I owned an infinite number of priceless hats: transcendental blue cloud-mottled gray dawn-streaked lavender rich velvet black -- spangled all over with diamonds! what if this day I finally broke the last shackles of gravity soaring higher and higher until heaven's splendor and mine became one
some things can't be measured such as the height of the sky towering within us dust we are and to dust we return but not entirely not what's never been born and so can never die I have a thirst for boundlessness I have a hunch there's more to me than just this shrinking brain and aging bag of skin as certain as the sky inspires the earth I know an Immortal Spirit animates my bones
one great thing's needed to heal and transform our fractured world -- if only every human being could rediscover their innermost communion with the sky! this hope seems impossible but I'll hold it in my heart nonetheless wish on a cloud walk on a star launch your soul like a rocket blasting off into the blue! the sky's limitless horizon is just as blindingly intimate as your next life-changing breath
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