Guard over your life,
Let your dreams’ pastures grow
In the nourishment of sunny days.
Ward off vultures and aggressive scavengers.
But let a little rain drizzle through
The days of your life if you want
To be a wildflower and grow
Wherever the wind’s planted you.
If you can carry yourself
With the weight of your entire soul
Upon your shoulders,
You can wade through
Even the deepest river
Crossing your path;
Dry-shoed and warm
Without sacrificing a single layer
To the river wild.
Sometime we get lost in the inscrutability
Of our lives, like ships in fog.
Until a conch blower, with homemade night goggles,
comes along and sweeps us off our feet.
But perhaps being lost is not so bad.
You certainly don’t need night goggles
To look inside your own soul.
Grace is like an eraser
Vanishing all stains and black splotches
Inked on the divine soul canvas
by the human ego.
I’m Beautiful at first glance,
Connected to the divine, wanting to soar above.
But I am Rooted in human darkness, in chaos and fear.
I am embraced by hands pushing down, wrapping me in beautiful petals
Too heavy to carry.
Wrapping and wrapping until I disappear
In a twisted beauty people love.
But the only truth is the wings, unswaddled, but bruised,
They always keep me afloat.
*This poem and photo is inspired by the Norwegian Photographer Morten Krogvold’s Photo Exhibition “Stille Lys” meaning “Quiet Light”.
Life is a Halo
We have done nothing
To deserve,
It just lights us up anyway.
I have seen something
with a brighter glow
Than an angel’s wing
In the face of a human
Rising hopefully
After a fall.
