Again I realize I am
falling, that behind
the closed door,
the everyday hardness,
lies still the door flung wide:
the soft sadness antecedent
to the 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 or
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 — but
the heart continually falling
through space, tumbling
through the years,
limned by the terrible tenderness
of perpetual prayer, unanswered, that
what is broken might be made
whole, and at the end
of this dark falling:
Light.
Meditatio Ephemera 
Such beauty. I love the lines: “Some small thing squeezes
into the shuttered heart:…” So much truth here. Okay, I love all of the lines.Thank you so much for sharing. ❤ Thank you for touching my heart (yet again) and my spirit. ❤ I love your blog.
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You are welcome, and I thank you for the many encouragements you have given me through your appreciation. It’s lovely to feel that back-and-forth flow. Wishing you a happy and peaceful holiday season!
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You’re welcome. I rather enjoy the back-and-forth flow too. I wish you a holiday season filled with love and peace and happiness!
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Oh, Cate. I can’t express how deeply this poem speaks to me. Thank you for sharing it.
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I’m so glad you found it resonant, Bob. So glad. Wishing you peace and love this holiday season.
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I have found both this season, Cate. Thank you.
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Oh this poem brought me to tears. It so tells how life is a constant free fall towards the light. Bless you!!
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Oh, thank you! It is good to not be alone on the journey, to feel kindred spirits around us. Thanks for being one. Many blessings to you, too.
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Love your choice of moon image, partly obscured … as is the unanswered (yet) prayer for return to prior wholeness (only perceived back when perhaps, but nevertheless what we yearn for now). Love is not a static, stable energy. I keep learning this over and over. I trust love will keep showing up in some form, seldom to my specifications.
Beautiful presentation of heart continually falling, never completely breaking.
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Thanks, Jazz. The accompanying sense that the prayer may, in fact, be perpetually answered — just not to our usual way of seeing — is important. You are right that love does keep showing up in some form, often requiring an open heart and keen eye to be recognized.
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