Stardust Grapples with Consciousness

Who appointed all my stardust,
Now, Be Human.
The atoms in my marrow
groan,
What have we done to be cast
Awake
Into this bone-cage of consciousness;
Unquenchable fire and ceaseless gnashing
of Desire
Doubt and Need?
We were content to be
a tree, a dog, a river.
Just to be
that thing
in fullness and peace,
only ever in the now.
How unthinkable and useless
striving for
love, purpose, philosophy, divinity,
understanding,
freedom from shame, lies, pain, mistakes.
Justice does not matter
to the matter of the universe.
There are no crimes.
What is broken is
only always repurposed and remade;
Never anything lost and
Never mourned.

All my molecules plead:
Put me back as a star,
The backbone of a whale,
stone on a cliff side,
glass of water,
bowl.
Anything
but this
Purgatory, endless
search for passion,
meaning,
place,
reason,
relief of suffering,
belonging,
peace.

Moon Dance

“I don’t want to lead you on,”
said the Earth to the Moon

She laughed, not unkindly
Knowing he always said this
After a deep lunar tide
When her gentle gravity
Had laid him more deeply bare
and flooded him all at once
And she had come close enough
- Her light with the weight of honey and breathlessness -
To revel over him in her audacious fullness.

Then she was thrust away on a long, solitary
Slingshot path
Banished farther away from all his topography, from his depths.

Who was leading who and why did it matter?
The steps in this dance were always the same.

On Hope

Hope is more than wishes or daydreams
or longings.

I think that maybe Hope is the energy of the Universe,
of Love,
of Creation itself, where it gathers inside of you
- in your blood, your bones, your soul - 
and sings low and long
- like the deep ocean -
to all the cells and synapses, chemicals and memories, dreams and language of You - calling
to Conspire, Surrender,
Attune to its inevitable weave and flow
toward Wholeness, toward Life
Passion,
Presence, Belonging.

Maybe Hope is the hum of Love itself
praying from inside of you,
from the very center of you
- praying for your own Awakening - 
for your own Awake, Brilliant, Love-filled Life
being born every moment
so that you will have no shortage of yourself
and your beautiful Soul,
so that you may be
as recklessly and relentlessly generous
as the whole Universe is with itself.

Snapshot of Dad on the Wall Above the Fireplace

My father is the clear, amber water of an Adirondack lake under morning fog
and the nearly silent slip of a canoe paddle leaving tiny whirlpools in its wake.
My father is bluegrass music
and a cider mill in a white barn.
He is sprawling gardens, warm cast-iron and old wooden fences at 19th-century living history museums. 
He is tar-scented old ship ropes and the stones of ghost-strewn battlefields.
My father is twilight backyard campfires under a lilac tree. 
He is the smell of
new-turned earth,
just-picked sweet peas and tangy, sun-warm tomatoes,
roasted pumpkin seeds,
cut grass,
sawdust,
popcorn and
burning lantern oil in snow forts.
My father is what it felt like to climb out my bedroom window, lie on porch-roof shingles on a warm summer night, and lose ourselves in the stars.
He is the balance in my backbone as I learned to ride my bike in a hillside graveyard. 
The strong push into toboggan-flight.
He is the Yes of my first pocket-knife.
Hot chocolate and donut diner-stop at 5:00 AM.
He is long walks at sunset into cricket-swell and the gathering dark.
St. Francis statue under the pine tree, stone arms laden with birdseed.
He is quiet arms around my heartbreak.
He is "Leaving on a Jet Plane", a Forget-Me-Not necklace around my mother's neck and dancing her to laughter in the kitchen.
Late Saturday afternoons crafting dinner like a long, contemplative prayer, an ode to comfort, presence and family, NPR on the radio.
He is sitting on the porch, watching thunderstorms roll through, the lightning-limned scent of rain on the wind.
I first recognized happiness as it sprang from the lines around his eyes when he laughed.
I know temperance and patience by the measure of his words.
I know humor and story-telling by their cadence.
His rich and steady spirit has telegraphed to me across all the moments of a beautiful life, like the sparks and pops of pine sap in the camp fire.
I have collected him all the years of my life. 
Fireflies in mason jars.

Happy Birthday, Dad - All my Love, Always.                                            (Photo by Britta Solan)