Friends for Life
I was born to live my life, and all I can do, in my confusion
is play by the Big Rules to find a way to be with dark and light.
Was there a time when I had no fear of death?
When my sexual partners and good hunting colleagues and dear faces of offspring
were snuffed, and my reaction was as dispassionate as watching a leaf fall from a tree,
my own body stiffening and wrinkling with time…
Did I begin to experience strange sensations,
and put my hand to my heart,
the place where the lurches, and stabs, and stopping of time occurred.
I must have sung my pain, moaned it, hummed it, growled it,
and learned, suddenly, that I had a friend –
the one who speaks to me, and is always with me,
so that we resonate together in sound, word, and deed,
until the music, as it moves from slow to fast, stormy to calm,
lyrical to chaotic, and back to booming bass…
I understand
is the beating of my heart
and the blood moving in my veins
and tinkling and twinkling of all things.
My friend and I, in perfect harmony,
are part of a giant web of all our relations –
all my relations – past present future
Each with a purpose, each with an unfolding.
As fear creeps into our lives,
We choose our neighbours and friends carefully,
withholding trust until ‘earned’
living in the past and the future
until we are alone in our fear,
and lonely: we have seen so much.
Yogiji said: “Sometimes it is day, but you still think it’s night.”
Phlip said: “Why can’t it just be a story?”
Malidoma: “Each of us has an elemental mission: some are of the earth, others of water, fire, mineral, and nature, which is the element of change.”
David Swenson: “Asking the question is far more important that hearing the answer.”
In the face of uncertainty
Before the whirls and twirls of unevenness in constant motion
I love you, my friend.
