To A Friend In Longing

You will meet

the earthen queen

whose feet walk in spirals toward your garden gate

Perhaps she knows this,

perhaps she does not

Her hands even now feel empty

without your core to hold

A tattered, silken scrap of the Goddess’ apron you will meet

and you -

you will go up in flames

A small ember of you will stay in her hand

a burning promise of your company along her roads

and of your eventual full-circle return

The rest of your parts will fly like startled grey doves

and perch in the clouds

There to mix with the breath of earth,

in wide blue lungs of earth

There to collect in droplets of finest you

And when you are heavy enough

with the strength of having burned completely away

you will rain yourself down in greatness of long love

You will fling yourself out of the sky, as you are able

As each part of you finds itself mirrored

in she who waited for you and burned you up,

that part of you shall surrender

It shall seek to fall

without help

without any desire to escape from tangled-ness with her,

with no notion of pride either wounded or protected

And so you will descend drop by drop

to the ice

to the snow

to the river’s source

And so you will slip into clear sweetwater lakes 

of her quenching peace

of her renewing fires

You will press yourself hard to clogged unyielding dams of struggle

with other and with self

Because you fall willingly, you will follow well

the course, the run and rapids

of a whole life’s journey 

back to sea

back to she

who will hold up her palms to catch your fresh drops of life

Back you will come to the self

first retrieved in her territories

and freed in her fire

Your reconciled self

will gratefully tumble and crash down the path

of cultivated humility

before the beloved other