Falling

I realize, suddenly, that I am falling
That behind this closed door, this everyday hardness,
Lies still the door flung wide, a soft sadness that opens onto

a long descent: the intractable span
between beginnings and endings,
dreams and reality,
then and now.

We speak of falling in love,
but there are other ways to fall.
Deeper.  Longer.

Some small thing squeezes into the shuttered heart:
The discarded cat, cold and hungry beneath the bird feeder,
or its fletched and fragile kill, bright eyes dimming.
Your father’s shuffling gait behind the walker.
A memory, sharp with joy, of love at the beginning,
of what we felt before we felt something other than love.

Not so much, then, the heart breaking,
which might be completed.
Rather, the heart continually falling through space,
tumbling down the distance and through the years,
limned by a terrible tenderness,
an unanswerable longing.

That good would endure. Love prevail.
Not always perfection, but perfection finally,
and of a kind we might recognize:
Impeccable. Unassailable.
All the brokenness made whole.
At the end of this dark falling:  Light.

 

 

 

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Tags: aging, depression, grief, loss, poetry, sadness, spirituality, time