Today I am Seeking {5}

Multiple solid nights out of ten, there I am, wide awake by 4 am.

Sometimes, I leap from my bed, to knit with the dark, awaiting the sun.

Sometimes, I take the time to simply be still, to rest in cozy and warm.

Sometimes, though, it feels as if the morning will kill me, waiting to attack with all of its possibility, and there I lie, a pile of lethargy.

It is hopelessness, weaving strands throughout my being, until the snooze eventually asks for my reply, and I give it, time and time, again.

(It is hopelessness, my old and weary friend. Each of us has one, the thing that ties us down when all we want to do is get up, stand up, be.)

This morning I climb out of bed, later than I meant. I climb down the stairs. I climb toward the coffee pot. I climb into the chair.

I climb into the Father's lap, and let Him hold me, there.

I lay my hand upon His heart, beating there, for me, for you,
for this weary worldly spin.

He lays His finger on my wrist, pulsing, pulsing, just like Him.

He holds us dear, He holds us dear, He holds us dear.

Hope.

(So, today, I am Seeking. And, today, I was found.)

~~~

Hold Everything Dear
for John Berger

as the brick of the afternoon stores the rose heat of the journey

as the rose buds a green room to breathe
and blossoms like the wind

as the thinning birches whisper their silver stories of the wind to the urgent
in the trucks

as the leaves of the hedge store the light
that the moment thought it had lost

as the nest of her wrist beats like the chest of a wren in the turning air

as the chorus of the earth find their eyes in the sky
and unwrap them to each other in the teeming dark

hold everything dear

the calligraphy of birds across the morning
the million hands of the axe, the soft hand of the earth
one step ahead of time
the broken teeth of tribes and their long place
                                                                         steppe-scattered and together
clay's small, surviving handle, the near ghost of a jug
carrying itself towards us through the soil

the pledge of offered arms, the single sheet that is our common walking
the map of the palm held
in a knot
                                              but given as a torch

hold everything dear

the paths they make towards us and how far we open towards them

the justice of a grass that unravels palaces but shelters the songs of the searching

the vessel that names the waves, the jug of this life, as it fills with the days
as it sinks to become what it loves

memory that grows into a shape the tree always knew as a seed

the words
the bread

the child who reaches for the truths beyond the door

the yearning to begin again together
animals keen inside the parliament of the world

the people in the room the people in the street the people

hold everything dear

[19th May 2005  |  Gareth Evans]