No relief from consequence

We should have seen it coming. The signs were all there, but hindsight lets one see the details in their entirety in a way the present moment refuses to allow. If we'd known, I cannot even try to list all the things we'd each have done differently. But the facts were too obscure, too varied to see their relation, let alone their meaning. Without stars falling from the sky, the hopeful faith we have that life will continue to maintain its balance tends to prevail. But this time, that faith was wrong, so very, very wrong. And the losses caused by this unintentional error of our human programming, so far beyond any expectation, were blinding. And we are still absorbing the enormity of it. To cast blame is the quickest response, but offers no relief from consequence, offers no response to the haunting question "what now?". No wonder the learned of our time had taught so uniformly the psychology of loss - that acceptance is only the end result of all grieving, that much must be battled before its reprieve may be earned. A lesson I think we're learning and needs be remembered, taught anew to the youth we fight so hard to protect, even if those learned are now long gone. Even if those learned, too, missed all the warning signs we each can see so clearly, now.

Ferocity hiding

A large bed in the center of a room lit only by candles. Silken sheets of deep green, propped on pillows like a Queen. Glass of deep warm wine in one soft hand, the other running over the soft fir of a half wolf, ferocity hiding behind sweetness and sleep, hiding beneath my hands. So then it was too, for the wolf's master, ferocity hiding, long limbs entwined in mine and I sip of the wine. --------------------- My eyes open to the sound of birds, the cold, rough bed linens beneath me, and the sad moment one realizes a dream for what it really is. I rise and face the day, knowing the face from my dream will shatter into my wakefulness and cross my path this day. Foreboding and excitement fight for mind's majority, until referee Wisdom quiets the field. I rise, the ferocity hiding this time, is now mine.

Disappearing Winds

This. This is my happy place. Right here. Surrounded by green and blue, tree and sky, mountain and water, we have finally arrived. Where we are, we know not. But here we stand, knowing from where we've come, what through we've traveled, but blind as to the why. The stars still light the sky here. Even with no moon, the nights are bright. I am not the first nor the last to have noticed, though, that this place carries a strangeness hidden in it's grace. By a certain time each night, before the last have turned to bed, the wind simply vanishes. Regardless of the wind of day, the gusting of early evening, a tidal wave of silent sky washes into this place and over us, forcing out all winds, always when night feels of it's deepest cold. Of course, if a great storm billows by during the hours of darkness, nothing may stay such winds as those. But once noticed, we have found the rhythm of our nights too unusual to deny. And so I say, you disappearing winds, carry with you each day's trials and tears, it's blisters and bruises, it's weight and worry and it's fears. Keep them there away with you, wherever you steal away to each night. Hiding in wait, resting for return with rising sun and opening eyes, ready for a new day, in this new here.

Play on.

I couldn't speak the name. I was somehow hoping I could keep holding my breath, to imprison the moment with a pause button of will. To have more time to reload myself, to absorb all been lain before me. But as with each and every before, this snapshot in time again reclaimed it's movement from my lungs, and the video played on.

Recycled Lessons

Day in and day out, we fight battles, small and large. Some days fewer, some weeks more. Rotating revolutions of recycled lessons to be learned, and, so it seems, a pattern of increasing difficulty appears to follow those who fight valiantly and attempt an openness to at least some growth, to some change. But seems it worst to be one of the many, refusing to face the demons life chooses to send in attack. And so each time a battle is due one, the same wars shall that one fight forever in lost monotony, until the choice to learn, to evolve, to move forward has been made. Yes, new struggles are frightening, in robes of change and unknown, but never knowing a victory over a repetitive rival is destructively disheartening in a way harder to see, but deeper to feel. To never earn gratitude for that moment one's soul realizes it's own strength, to me, is somehow missing the point. Perhaps all these new and exaggerated hardships we are now wrapped in are a sign, a sign that we few have earned this responsibility now before us, the responsibility to evolve.