Contraction and Rebirth

These babes of my heart
Growing rapidly out of my reach
My control
I must hold you
Retain the moments
That slink through back doors every time I'm busy.

I packed you into a car and ran for it
Fleeing the engulfing vastness of life.
I have to get you out of its reach
If I am to keep you.
I drove like mad
Through unknown country
And came out in a place
That could scare the ticking time out of you
It was bigger than all of us
Bigger than time

Yosemite
With its great looming
Mounts of granite
Grey domes of rock
Giant knuckles of agelessness.
The trees were monstrous, and gentle
The bears looked you right in the eye.
The water fell in sheets
And pounded in syncopated rhythm with my heart.
This place was mighty.

But when I looked to see its affect on you,
There you all were,
Bigger than ever.
You had crushes
And your vocabulary was shocking
And you built fires
And read maps.
I had to keep going.
I knew one more place.

Bigger than the halls of the Titans.
My mother.
My home
Womb of my heart
She calls to my guts
And reminds me I am a tiny thing.
She will slow your aging.

Pacific
Vast and eternal
Roaring and raging
Noisy voice of ageless whooshing
Home of leviathan
Blue whale
Trenches miles deep
Covering the earth
Swallowing sailors
Erasing history
Slowly, steadily, endlessly.

And here I sit on a rock
Hypnotized by her.
We walked hours and miles on her shores
And forgot where we started.
I watch my babies playing in her surf
And they are giggling, cooing little ones.
They have shrunken to their proper stature.
They have surrendered.

Thank you Ocean Mother
For slowing their growth
For bathing them in your purity again
For delivering me three sleepy, happy, tiny, humble babies
Who I can calmly drive home again
Amid sandy seashells
And salty smiles.

On God, Life, the Universe, Gender, the Heart, Comfort and Futility

I climbed this peak to try to hear from God.
Or to listen to my heart.
Or to get an answer from the Universe.
Not sure if the Universe is capable of answering.
I know that Life answers. Eventually.
Are Life and the Universe the same thing?
I know they aren't God.
I fully believe in God.
Not that he always answers, but he does speak.
I'm saying He although I believe God to be genderless.
Can't call God It can I?
In this world nothing worth respect is without gender.
And only men are given real respect.
Though they deserve it much less often than they're given it.
And they take it for granted.
So how to refer to God?
Is there a pronoun worthy of the Divine Creator?
I'd ask, but I've already referenced the more or less futility of that.
But hear I am.
Listening.
My heart has chanted the same phrases to me for a very long time.
I don't think it's to be trusted.
It's full of deceit and desperately wicked.
I'm sure I don't know it at all.
It is a discouraging organ.
And it seems its supplies of cortisol never run low.
It is heartache this and heartsick that.
My heart is always broken -
Which God calls blessed, for I will be comforted.
But my heart quit waiting for the fulfillment of that promise a long time ago.
I don't think I even know what comfort really is.
I used to think it was a total cleansing of the hurt.
A purging of pain and suffering.
The ability to forget it all...or at least, to understand the reasons for it.
Or maybe it was tied to another promise from God -
He will give you the desires of your heart..
Is that comfort?
To get what you wish for?
I wouldn't know.
I waited too long for that too.
My heart wants Everything and is too used to settling for whatever it can get.
I just turn it off at a certain point.
There's no use in nurturing these unattainable yearnings.
Still, sometimes I put out little feelers in the great unknown.
I tattoo "WISH FOR EVERYTHING" on my arm.
I pray.
I climb to the top of the world and wait.
Wait for the sky to open up.
For lightning to strike me.
For a moment of clarity.
I am Cool Hand Luke standing powerless in a storm.
And I am left with thoughts, silence and blank pages to try and fill.

(c) Tasha Cheney 2015