To Stand

And what will you do when you sit in the silence?
In the quiet which once you so assiduously avoided
In the stillness you withdrew from like an octopus extracting tentacles, reflexive,
Such that you had no notion it was avoidance at all?

A squirrel scrambling for purchase on the next bright leaf, heart beating—
So your life has been

So, what will you do when the soul calls forth quiet and will abide no more distraction, dissatisfied with all that glitters being so far from gold?

When you are called to lift and hold your head because some great breath rises to catch you like a kite, pushing all falsity aside
As a great birth opens, and you are on the cresting morning, with the sun
And you must find the obsidian soul of you, or die

At first, I imagine, you will bow, perhaps grovel even—grinding your face into the gravel
But you will find no one delighting in your destitution, and no angel crying out for your penance

At last, after no more bowing, won’t you simply learn to stand?
And perhaps you’ll weep at your unsortedness, unworthy to receive the land given to you endlessly, its wet strand streaming in the bright spear of morning

Grace then will make you rise, with a gift you strain to support—
Your head lifted, and crowned

Your aspect and yours eyes tilted up, into the sun
After such long comfort taken
In looking down