Homecoming Storm Poem

All you can offer me is words of sorrow and regret.

My storm rages and crashes down around us. 

I am trapped.

Our phone screens captivate us in the angry trance I have spooled out from my tender aching heart hardening into piercing shards that glitter and stab.

I know that I am caught in a twisting gripping narrow space; the howling winds of my feelings hold me rather than I them. 

I know this. Meditation has gifted me this awareness.

And yet, I cannot, no, I will not soften or expand. 

So the pain gathers upon the banks of the horizon rolling in with a slow malice. 

Rumbling drums played by faceless warriors strike with a blind ferocity that crackles in the air. 

The world pauses.

I feel as though not a soul in the universe understands the cloven center of my dantian, my belly, my hara. 

And also, I know this to be untrue–we all feel–and yet, I cannot, will not soften or expand. 

So I rage onwards. And I rage and march and blow my grey winds across the ocean reaching for land where I will make myself known. 

To whom? 

But the sun has risen in the East peaking over the tall green hills and rocky cliffs that tumble down into the salty swell. 

Mist and sun. They burn. They alchemize. 

Together, they are wondrous. Sundrops that fizz and sizzle into a massive halo around the bright glowing star that heats us up and brings us home to ourselves. 

The choice resurfaces.

I am humbled.

I am softening.

All I can offer you is sorrow and acceptance for the war I waged.  

The storm doesn’t disappear, instead it lifts and dances this way and that and whooshes around with so much spaciousness that it catches my breath and I dissolve into the dark clouds up, up, up until I can feel Venus and Saturn.

I look down and watch the grief crash against black piles of earth like the old friend that it is. 

I can feel the sun everywhere and I hold it in my huge arms, rocking it like a baby.