Author: Elizabeth Maynard

It is no accident to find you here
well-hidden from yourself
in the too-muchness
of daily life
If you stop distracting
with all this busyness
urgency and importance
can you withstand
every gentle truth about yourself?

Do you grow tired of recycling
all your disappointments
weary of rehearsing
every tragedy that might come?
It is so very difficult to stand still
absolutely present
in this life you created for yourself

They seeded the clouds
to bring the rain
great tearing sheets of it
drown the streets
leave you ankle-deep
so the rivers fill
fuel the great machine
turn the turbines
generate the spark
to light the houses
cool rich heads
while the rest, dragged under
save what they can
from the swirling sea

Barely blinking
I wonder:
What can transform this stupor
this bone-weary wandering
into something more sublime
awe-striking
and for a moment
stupendous?

Your mother's only living son
you rode, hell-bent
through dusty streets
held strangers too close
your wife too far
drank enough to stop feeling
smoke-shrouded
until the day
the world came down
I could not even pen an elegy
my heart, too, stopped still
in my chest

Daily doubting
keeps me hovering
If only I could know all this
indubitably
I might fold my wings
and land

If you had one stitch
to spend on what needs mended
what would you make whole?

Here was everything you feared
in a message, in a call
the truth came and stopped you dead
forced your turn back
to the land of the living
land of the lost

I want you to surprise me
now and how
let me hear you
from a world away
working hard to sound
confident as your heart
tries to beat its way
out of your chest

This moment contains all moments.

C.S. Lewis

This great yawning
moment surrenders to me
contains every unspoken word
all that we felt but hid
moments that escaped us both