The Longest Night

Now listen to your broken heart.

Sink into the wound and bathe

in the balm of midnight.

Don't follow a star.

Your destination is

the gray stuff in cocoons,

neither wing nor worm.

Let your root find sap in black loam

oozing the light of distant suns.

What are a thousand golden petals

or the fragrance of balsam and myrrh

compared to the yearning

of the shadow for its cause?

When you are truly silent

you'll hear birthless seeds

singing in the dark,

bursting thin sepulchers of ice,

already whispering,

"April, April..."

Winter is not an absence.

Spring is not a destination.

Faith is to fall

through the longest night

and witness your falling,

which means to rest

in the groundless

until you are healed

by your loss.

 

Painting: by Lori Sweet