A poem from the weekend

[hess42]

I wrote this immediately after a labyrinth walk/meditation experience on Saturday morning. The walk was very cool, basically a walking meditation on death and dying. The facilitators provided some drumming and trancy (so not a word, except in my head) talk, but mostly it was a space for silence and reflection. Walking back to collect my bag and head up the hill for a 9am meeting, this poem came to mind almost fully formed:

Dreams die
Lives end
I reach toward a shimmering reflection in a still pool
And hold back
Can I shatter the illusion by feeling the water on my fingers?

Dreams die
Lives end
But I need this dream to last a little longer
Need this life to last a little longer
And I hold back
Unready to give up the life of one who believes in the impossible

Dreams die
Lives end
But others begin
I awaken a little with each choice
With each death
And maybe letting impossibility fall away with the sensation of water on my fingers
Is precisely what my future self needs
Is precisely what my next life needs

Dreams die
Lives end
I think about that future self
Wise and understanding and a teacher of lessons
A well-lived life, one that cannot start until I reach into the pool and see the ripples of water radiating from my hand
I like him
I want to be him when I grow up
It's time to grow up

And so I reach to that reflection and it reaches toward me
I reach into the illusion of the impossible and it reaches back to me
I feel phantom droplets an instant before our hands touch
And then...warmth. A touch of flesh.
I pull him out, or he pulls me in, and we smile. The impossible made manifest.

Dreams live
Lives end

-jhf, 10/20/2007