Trapped

There is a grief that simmers here

That cannot find its way

To emerge from the cracks

That break open inside of us

When those we love

Who tethered our souls

To life

Depart

Their leaving begins the fraying

And the breaking

That so many of us have no means of enduring

And so it is we find our ways

To deny the truth

Of what has been torn away

Or the many ways we become

Broken

In the aftermath

Will these losses

Become our undoing

Or our new beginning

Our ending and surrendering

Of an old way of being

Or a thing that we keep trapped so deep inside of us

And will those witnessing our struggle

Truly ever know

The difficulty of what we are facing

When this mixed up world

So often provides no means of

Holding us

Or embracing us

In our need for feeling

Releasing

Grieving

And healing

The spirit in us

The spirit in us may

Sometime be weighted down by care

May feel its silent wings fluttering

Never the less

In silent anticipation of flight

And yet the soul in us may have a larger say

Knowing the necessity of those times

We struggle

With our feet submerged

Feeling as though fashioned of clay

For we are often

Perched

Betwixt and between

The two dimensions

Of death and of living

And at times our silent hungers rage

Like beasts too long forgotten

In a hidden cage

While our silent heart weeps tears

For the remembering

Of all that once gave to it

Hope

And joy

And ecstasy

Before the slings of outrageous fortune

Cut deep into the roots of our wings

Like knives

Eclipsing spiritual hope

And yet out spirit still sounds out its note

And our soul will never allow it to be

Perpetually silenced

In the silence

Sometimes I hear you

Speaking words of love to me

From deep within the silence

I feel the power of your care

Surrounding me

As the brace around my heart

I held so tight

Finally lets go

And I fall into the sadness

Hidden beneath

I think of the times

You expressed such grief

For her

The daughter you loved so

I like to believe

That somewhere from behind the veil

You are sending support to me

Doing all you can

To see that I am set free

From these chains of loneliness

Encouraging me to let go of my fear

And open my heart to him

Completely

And I only know

That peace only ever seems to be

Truly found

When I embrace surrender

And let myself fall

Into the mixed up pool of longing

I feared for so long

Entering

And then

In these quieter moments

When tears are spent

And I have fallen low enough

To embrace gentleness

I feel as you reach out your spirit

To embrace me tenderly

You will not pass this way again

Just a moment ago

I thought I saw you lingering

Close to the door frame

But it was a just a vision of a cloud

That cast its shadow down

And the grief inside

That is always just a way behind me

Projected upon my mind

A vision of you

Instead

Lingering there

But for you my love

Life has ended

And there is in this

Such a sense of loss

Almost too deep to fathom

And even though

Somewhere I know

A part of you remains forever here

Inside my heart

There is still this terrible ache

Of yearning and heartbreak

A longing to see you once again

Lingering here

Sending all my grief aloft

Floating away from me on the clear clear air

But sadly wishful thinking sinks

Now

With the realisation

You will not pass this way again

You will not pass this way again

Love’s undertow

Floating downstream you found yourself

Once again lost in the tidal wave that pulls you under

Intimations of love draw you towards the soul of another

Whose magnet self calls

Please my dear

Recognise me

Echoing your own need

We wait and wait so patiently

For the day we our two flows can meld together

Distance no longer keeping

Our two rivers and hearts

Separate

For love in flesh made manifest

But when the reality comes

And tide finally carries us towards

Our imagined yet uncertain destination

Who knows how much reality will resemble reverie

There is the dream and then the actuality

As on the borderlands we wait

For the right time

To catch the flow of the tide

And surrender ourselves

Body and soul

To the magnetic pull

Of love’s powerful undertow

I miss you

I miss you

Really my dear

They are true

These words I most long and fear

Saying to you

Risking unlocking a doorway

Into past loss

I locked so tightly shut

Burying the pain of all those chaps

Who stole my heart

Leaving me empty

When shadows rose

From out of the black

How desperately I hold on

To these bizzare incapacities

Thinking unconsciously

That possibly

If I do not say these words

I miss you

I wont feel the longing in my heart

So often thwarted

To just surrender to the safety

Of loving arms

Abandoning myself to those seductive charms

Of connection

I can no longer pretend it doesn’t exist

This buried hunger of longing

And that the pain of having had no one close

Didn’t affect me so deeply

But when we spoke about all of my injuries

I finally found that jigsaw’s missing peace

It made sense of why I hurt so much

And of where the hole in my soul came from

And then even when love came

So often all I could do was seek a way

To get as far away

Fearing love would entirely

Swallow me

I know this missing of you

Will come and go

And no one knows at times

The rhyme and reason of it

And yet in this season of learning to hear my heart

I will just for now

Give this longing and missing of you a voice

Instead of just pretending

I am always strong enough

To cope alone

After the op

Your voice was groggy on the phone

As we spoke

Afternoon light falls softly

Just as it did in the hours after Mum died

Hospital beds became a familiar place

All too familiar in those later years

As we kept our silent vigils

And it is not until we talk

That I realise how much fear I carry

And how much I stumble and falter

In really knowing how to be there

In a programme today on autism

Suffers spoke of difficulties with social cues

And obeying the rules

Everyone else just conforms to naturally

Or takes for granted

And then I recall how gauche

I so often felt in company

Always a few paces left of ‘normal’

And as they spoke of the enormous cost

Of not fitting in

Of being different

I could not help but sense how sad it is

This society

Where everything is defined

By such sharp parameters

You may never know the feelings I have in my heart

For you

I know in the past we struggled to be close

But now as I hear your voice

Still groggy from all the meds

I shed so many tears

And feel such deep seated fears

My entire body felt so strange

After we left each other here

And I stumble to find the words

To communicate

What my heart so wants to say

But somehow I must try

Because to remain silent

Just hurts me

Far far too much

And somehow I realise

As mysterious as these feelings are

This strange mix of pain and trembling

And hurting and longing

Is a lot like

Love!

Hollow

Every time you left

I felt

Hollow hollow hollow

The pain went deep into my bones

Swirling around in the marrow

Bathing me in dread

And it felt that with all the letters

Rearranged

Left created

Felt sense

Of sheer terror

Difficult for a soul to contain

But all these years hence

I sense

The reasons why

This hollowness began to surround

My soul

And take me down

To that loveless place

And only then

Within the devastation

Did I learn how

To become my own mother

And defeat the terrorist

Who only wanted to tear me apart

Inside

As I realised how that force always lied

About a truth I lost the way to

And could only find

At the end of a long journey

Filled with confusion

That finally led me home

To a place so deep and full

And bathed in love

No longer

As hollow

Shifting seas

Ready for a big journey

The ocean waves of my dreams carry me

Down to the pier where an attendant asks me

Are you really ready to commit to this

Long and dangerous night sea journey

And at this particular time

I don’t really think he understands

There is no alternative

So my dreaming self

Signs the paper as I receive my ticket

And then the scene shifts and I am on a raft

Accompanying me a prostitute, a drug addict and a sailor

The seas are high and the waves are vast

And rest of the dream is eclipsed completely

By the forgetting of night

But I remember it now as we speak of how powerful

These inner messages can be

It was not that long until I would

Sign up for sobriety

And in another dream

Dad would call me out

Of that den of iniquity

Showing me a wallet that was

Bare of cash

And as I ran from there

I watched the entire place

Burst into flames

And burn to ash

As in our waking newly married life

Fires raged

All around us

In distant hills

A phase of my life was ending

And all these years hence I realise how hidden

Is our deeper understanding

And think again of that powerful force within

Which has glimpses and intimations

Of the deeper hidden truth of things

And reveals them slowly

Under cover of the night

As we awaken in dawn’s early light

To a future we never seemed to choose

Our rising destiny

Which our soul leads

Us to navigate

Stormy waves

Attending dreams

As shifting seas

Uproot and rearrange our inner and outer life

Entirely

Birthed from love

Trust your sadness

Don’t let it harden to defensiveness and anger

Let your heart be gently soft

As you count the enormous cost

Of all you wished for but could not gain

Of all that was longed for but lost

Trust the process enough to know

That somewhere even in the darkest shadows

Light is still shining somewhere

Even if covered over by frost and snow

For as the ice melts

Light will come again

As all that was illusion is dissolved

Through this process of transformation

Truly I tell you

That the sun will come again

After this all this grief

 For how could sadness be birthed

From anything else

But love?