I once (so long ago it seems like now)
poised my sealed, stone-filled heart on the
inky brink of hopelessness (no one put it there but I)
and still a gray midmorning brings back the
small precipice to stab at my eyes -
the damp of a slogging, sullen autumn stinging every sense
and deepening the reach of its unyielding decay,
every fetid mass of summer past filling my
constricted heart with
droning pity for my soul
and every fuscous plot of soggy earth
seemed fit to swallow me in
neverending death.

Miserere mei Deus -
all I see is stone and lowering cloud.
I did not yet learn that it is only in the deepest night
that we see the farthest things
or that it is only when winter fully comes
that we know what is evergreen.

What opened my eyes, lifted my head,
I cannot yet say -
gradually there seeped in (as grace always does,
creeping in gently from the bottom, rising light)
a possibility of more
the possibility of something possible
and opportunity to act.

There is a goodness in the world
(and still I weep when my own attempts at goodness
are acknowledged with even a nod);
there is a Truth so much larger than we are,
and which yet fits
precisely within us, as we fit into it.

Gradually, I opened my fists,
lifted my hands to receive,
and then, recognizing that
all is grace,
all is the gift of love,
I began to rise up.

Rise up, and give it all away.