Conversation with the Cosmos, Black Sabbath
I sit and become quiet,
hoping to enter
a one-sided conversation with the cosmos.
Aware of a cloud
frenetic anxiety
pouring out from all over the world.
In the silence of my own heart I hear,
"Listen and listen well little friend.
I see your heart, as my own,
alive and in the rhythm of every cell and season.
Can you hear your kin, sick and afraid,
clinging to the wind?
Tell them that joy and sorrow are not separate,
and that grief is what allows love to flourish,
Loss and sadness are sand in the hand.
Tears don't ask whether of despair or rapture.
Dread implies an alternative (there isn't one).
Loneliness is the preamble to re-connection.
Blame makes anger burn instead of heal.
Work without play is an investment in long term despair,
and play has no winners or losers.
Everything moves precisely beyond comprehension or scrutiny.
Every ocean is bounded on all sides,
though your vision does not see the whole container,
every wave meets the shore;
all that has beginning has also middle and end.
Whatever pains you now is passing,
and what will remain is not up to you.
Just as thousands of generations before you
came and went under the same unbounded sky,
looking up they endured without knowing
why, how, for what, to what end, or until when.
Look anywhere and you will see yourself.
Use every moment as a gift to remember:
There is nothing to gain or lose in life.
Whatever you seek to grasp is already and always with you."
Breathing in and breathing out,
my part of the conversation remains consistent,
and not of my own doing.
I, as much as any other being,
subject to cosmic forces indifferent
but not altogether hostile.
This more than human world,
uncompromising in its organization,
has a vulnerable place for us.
Each season a renewal.
Fallen leaves
Now tender sweet leaf (Black Sabbath).