Vespers

 

You say you must learn

to embrace your dark side.

But why did you need to take sides?

Darkness is not the absence of light.

Darkness is the womb of light.

Be a thousand-armed whirler

spinning from the tenebrae
between Winter and Spring.

That is where the Mother is.

Let a black Madonna be your breath.

Then you won't need any rule

but wonder.

Just for awhile, let grief and gladness

drink from the same grail of tears -

the cup you've been holding

too long in your ribs

and polishing too carefully.

What was full must spill and get chipped.

Mother Raven, with her fire-flecked 

feathers, will carry no sun in her beak

to dip in the chalice of your heart, 

but a porcelain zero of new moon,

brimmed with the swirling  splendor

of emptiness, portal to the uncreated.

Now hear evening fall.

Listen to darkness come with all her stars,

those bells un-struck yet ringing, 

and beyond their far faint music,

the final beauty, silence.

Listening cleanses the mind of thought, 

of time, of the need to awaken,

because the grace of the present moment
illuminates your bones.

What was that troubled dream?

What was that world swept away

by this breath?