Run Beautiful To Your Own Birth

I will flee wildly like in a movie, past nature’s all

in one great green blur, looking for what is the

great cause of everything. I will be in chase of

wonder and what is always cracking open

on the other side of perception.

My growing heart needs to know what will

happen next, but my kind heart tells me to

stay still so I can listen. I’m hearing you.

Yes! I fall down in relief but before the warmth can

overtake me, I see something in the distance,

a figure, maybe, cloaked in light, so beautiful. I

don’t move toward her but my attention moves

there because it is easier there than here;

it is effortless to go there.

Before taking even one step in the shimmer of my

mind, the image falls away fast to a blue horizon

that swallows for good every dream that has ever

sparkled through our prophet-loving nights.

I want to call out, I’m on my way! and bound

across forests, rivers and the ocean to meet her,

even as I stand here in complete certainty that

that this has never happened, that it is dust,

however gold. I bend down to wait for

precious life to meet my searching heart.

And find Love. Sounds of humming, chirps and

murmurs in creature-perfect communion. A slow

movement calls out to me so I come closer, and

find a shell resting on a leaf that sways in the

small wind. Squiggling out of the shell is a new

life squirming and now taking little pauses to

rest. I’ve never watched a ladybug give birth

to herself, a universe coming into life in the

tiniest of world pockets. She has no pattern

yet, she is completely unmarked in orange

purity as she breaks free from her old

house and walks like she knows

the way it goes. And so she

goes, into the leaves’

folds, and so I

follow her,

pulsing,

here,

now.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

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Editor: Renée Picard

Image: Jaci Lopes Dos Santos at Flickr