August Evening

a poem

We are not imprisoned in ourselves and we are not alone. Your soul is not a single seed isolate in frozen ground nor is your heart a stone. No one can put up castle walls to hold themselves with any lock and key, for we are creatures of a teeming world.

Though we at times may fear the overawing beauty of a sunset or a dawn, the foreign eyes which penetrate our eyes, the grip of birdsong on our throat, the touch of whispering wind on naked cheek; though we at times may fear the loosening of the knotted strings of individual identity these intimate invasions bring, still soul beyond your soul is everywhere and crowding close.

Sit in company with a weeping woman, sharing grief for her beloved gone beyond the veil, and then up on the picture screen inside your brain behold a presence standing right there beside the woman's shoulder in an areole of other-light, presenting emblems of some sort about some message they would have you speak. Will you belie your claims of courage? You will not.

So turn an ear to seek a whisper from the very depths of mystery, and study carefully and breathe and speak.