Don't Try

 

Don't try to love yourself.
That's asking a lot.
A lot from One
hurting for the warmth
of an Other.
Mists, prairies, waves.
Nature wants to enfold you.
Who commanded you to love?
I say, don't try.
Better to feel the throb
in a single cell
than the numbness in the marrow
between stars.
Better to taste your wound,
digest it like the pièce
de résistance,
than struggle to rise above.
That effort only divides you,
doubling your sentence of lashes.
"Love yourself"
is a very hard commandment,
hardly the healing you need.
Just rest in the unspeakable care
that already covers you
with a gesture of forgiveness
that has nothing to do
with your will to perform it.
Honor the graceful mistake
that ended in this disaster,
the bruise concealed,
the holy incompetence
of a wandering mind,
the pilgrimage of distractions,
the love who cannot find
her way home.
Honor the ache.
Little numbers are best.
Not more than 9 in a circle
to worship, to praise
and sing their journey
into silence.
3 gathered to grieve,
with six hands held and so
many fingers entwined.
See how our entanglement
begins from almost nothing.
2 gazing
through each others eyes,
dissolving galactic distances.
Now just 1 alone, enthroned
in her womb of zeros.
To enter the heart
requires less, not more.
Be poor in Spirit,
mighty as a wind-scattered seed.
Don't try to love.
That's asking a lot.
Just bathe in the bittersweet sea
of the next moment.
What washes over you now?
All these sparks of darkness
spinning inside your heart.
Mists, prairies, waves.
Nature wants to enfold you.