This dream is over in an instant,
the sharp upright pain in the heart,
lunging forward into wide-eyed reality,
as if the racing nerve endings might
never return to a deep relaxation in sleep.

That is how Love can be.

Not the nightmare, but the
return to normal awareness,
realizing that all your life before this
was just a wooden fantasy,
alone, without substance, waiting
to be breathed into

until that first person reminded you,
touched you, woke you from slumber
to the wild-paced rhythm of
belonging to life,

they woke you to yourself,
at first a stranger (perhaps the nightmare),
but then groggily coming to see
that the aloneness never really was,
that the darkness was just a dream

and Love is the home of the world.

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Leaning down over the open earth,
I see a shell, delicate and intricate
but now carefully discarded and disposed of,
the huddled black figures around the hole,
fencing it in with sobs and prayers;

I am outside them all,
encircling their grief without hindrance,
like the cat calls her kittens to herself,
low murmurs and purrs, coaxing them
beyond the confusion and dissolution they
feel so readily surrounding them,
strangers even to themselves.
But all I feel is joy!

This was good, this living lived itself well.

Joy to see their faces once more,
even though contorted with tears, for
once more I am with them and free
enough to see into their hearts all
the love I blessed on them now
pouring forth like rain from the rivers
to mother me back into rest.

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