"Seeing in the Dark": Everyday Magic, Day 1,111

On Friday night, I shared this poem at Shabbat services at my synagogue. As I read it, I remembered how, when I wrote this some years ago, the news of the day seemed completely unsurmountable.

This last week -- as I aim myself toward the sweet spot between feeling necessary grief (as well as fear, despair, and shock) and avoiding falling into another 4:20 a.m. panic attack -- I'm reminding myself how change is constant, many people are innately loving and want to do good, and life is composed of uncertainty and mystery. Also, there are some things -- even in ourselves -- we can only see in the dark. I wish all of us hurting whatever brings us greater peace and vision.

Seeing In The Dark

Barn’s burnt down

now

I can see the moon

-- Masahide, 1657-1723

After the fire, what next?

Not the old words, aged with bitterness

or despair. Not habitual regrets and griefs.

Not just a reflection of anyone's ideas.

But what's right here: wind rising

through a tower of cottonwood.

Cicadas motoring their 17-year song.

Golden moon half revealed by

the silver of the passing cloud.

Good things, bad things happen.

News dissolves our vision of the world.

Not to say what's lost doesn't make us ache

or strip our days of reds so vibrant

we forget what we were thinking.

But whatever is lost also brings us to this window

composed of lush darkness, the rush or rain

through the leaves, the sudden chill dissolving

the hot anger or anguish, the pain of the questions

that, left unanswered, might divide us.

The music of the old house outlives the house.

We will make new murals out of the ruins,

mosaics from all that's broken, stone soup

at the center of our next feast.

Nothing in this world vanishes.

Even ghosts, loved enough, turn into angels.

The dark shows us what calls

not at the edge of what we sense

but from the center of where we live.

Nothing can take away the power of the real.

Published in How Times Moves.