An October Walk in the Park

If I saw you weighing,
waiting,
wondering
about your place and space
and I watched
your emptiness take shape,
one day content
in the simple act of cooking dinner
with basil on your fingers,
other times withdrawing
from aching disappointment
or confused by all those dualities
that lead you to the familiar
and unknown,
to the window
and the cellar,
all at the same time.
all at once,

If I watched your hearftfelt effort
to find yourself
at the place you first got lost,
I would confirm
there is no shortcut
and, fearful of sounding pompous,
I would think
about a few things
that may help,
depending.

I could tell you it is what it is,
that you have to feel your way
through jagged walls sometimes,
but in the end you learn to balance
between the mundane
and the sacred.

I could tell you the confusion stays.
It doesn’t ever really shrink,
sometimes because of real or imagined hurts
and sometimes because DNA works that way.
But—this is important—
I think the wonder stays too--
and so does the part you already know—
the part about how monumentally love matters.

So here it is.
This is where you might lose it--
these damn dualities.
I can’t tell you why you might
wake up in turbulence
When the rest of the world is busy
watching Jeopardy
or why you might soar
only to crash hard and tight.
But I can tell you
to expect confusion,
to learn to work with it,
to work around it
and beside it.
And I can tell you
there will always be
exhaulted wonder,
moments when the stunning fireworks
pull you from your roots
and you know every single thing--
all of it compacted into
the shining molecule
of acceptance.

Does this help?
Can you stay with yourself
when everything shifts
and you have to accept
before you seek?
Can you give yourself a break
and let not knowing
fill you in all the right places?

I HopeYou Can.