Good Food

Oh, but that the annals of one’s life would be tasty:

That at the end, the lips would smack in delighted satisfaction.

The ingredients could matter less than the collective: the flavors, the experience, the satiation.

Would that we dined more readily on the life and lives that nourish us.

What if we enjoyed the bites as gifts?

We’d probs compliment the overall meal too.

‘Cause doesn’t the temporal, the earthy hold the deliciousness of worlds?

(Yes.)

Held, magical, at all.

What if we – each one – saw our own life and lives as such?

As a glorious repast, a necessary constant, complement?

What if we – each one – saw all others’ too, in such a way?

Savorable.

Relished.

Received.

Nourishing.

‘Cause we are:

Each life containing worlds of wonder:

This is the Way.

Walk in it.

Take your time, close your eyes in deep relishing enjoyment.

We are fed with the impossibility, the actuality, the wonder and bewildering, magical improbability of myriad number of flavors.

A banquet for the receptive palate of taking in life-at-all.

Food for the soul, for the body, for the living and dying that’s ours.

Life and its effects, its requirements, its delights…

Taste and see that it is good.

Taste and see…

And then sit back, wide smiled, expanded in contentment and gratitude for the full stomach’s filling.

And then share.

Invite another to the table.

Rummage through the pantry

In willing participation to the feast.

If we all shared and celebrated the eating, no one would go hungry.

Love’s Thrill

  

 When the children came, “thrill” left

 Replaced by care and caution and love’s breadth

 Not always safe: the pursuit of safe.

 Lots may die in the wake of hesitate.

 But ah! That is not all there is.

 Before them wonder was a largely private (selfish) affair

 After them – with them, because of them – I am expanded

 Expanded in delight not just my own, but in delight in theirs

 What a gift! What a gift to be enlarged

 And stretched beyond my own thin skin

 These trenches and crumbs are not beneath me

 These are where the real life is – the full life is

 Forced outward love stretches all my womanhood

  – anyone’s personhood through parenthood – 

 Battle waged I am forced to reckon with these, with me

 To find that my self’s death is the truest liberty

 To be present and free from my own way:

 (Not just in order to indulge another’s whim)

 – But to provide what’s needed –

 This is liberation: realizing wholly the love within.

 So to find I’ve grown – and am willing more still –

 Becomes the delight of sacrifice – true love’s thrill

 To find that before I gloried in the small

 I’d venture I knew Glory not at all.