Homecoming

Dropping deep down into prayer, flow, trance
Will sometimes do it. Or when I feel us connect. These things
Show me how it feels to come home.
To put down, as if forever, those last few things I’m still carrying
And turn with empty hands toward the certainty of love.

It can be a long journey but at least now I know the way.
When you made the sun rise in me it reached my coldest stones.
Melting ice trickled, formed rivulets, became streams
And, before I knew it, rivers were rushing through my psyche, carving new paths
Which I followed straight to God.

I see why you worry that I might
Confuse the two of you. I don’t think I do, but it is also true
That my love for you is not secular. The thing is,
When we photograph someone
Through a chain-link fence,
We make a choice about focus.

I can see the fence when I need to, a complex reticulation of
Your body and behaviours and beliefs.
I can make out its lattices and interstices,
Its protective strength, the ways it cages you, the places where
You have leant against it for support
And been caught and torn by it.

It’s not that I don’t believe it’s real.
But when I let my gaze relax and go beyond, and my eyes find in yours
Your pure and shining soul,
That silver mesh blurs into irrelevance,
Just so much contingent inconsequential bullshit.

That is what I see when I let myself look at you openly, love:
I see the perfect and particular way
That Spirit has chosen to express itself through you in this lifetime,
To refract and disperse its sacred light through the prism
Of your beautiful and flawed humanity.
What you have been given, how you carry it, your courage, your fear.
The rainbow that is yours alone.
The resonance of your energy pattern, your unique vibrational frequency.

This is what I love and what brings me home. Your soul sets mine
Singing like a bowl.