Searching

I still flinch in my own unknowing, still carry on the tired and tiresome tale that it all amounts to nothing. It’s all dead or dying. Nothing left is worth saving. I carry this looted bit in a clenched fist, full of guilt, until it rots between my fingers, decomposing in my grip. Wash, rinse, go digging again. 

I don’t know what I’m searching for but it seems that sorrow is the easiest to find and oh so tempting, oh so simple, oh so tried and true. Left behind by those who lived lifetimes harvesting doubt, ignorant to starvation. 

I don’t know what I’m searching for but each time I find it I’m filled with a knowing that is older than the stolen fruit, steady as the rivers when they used to run clear; and there is a song echoing through the emptying woods with ancient reverberation. There is an equation and counting the pebbles, the leaves, the petals on the daisies, that always equates to riches in what’s left, what stands, what asks for resurrection. 

I don’t know what I’m searching for, but I’m sure I’ve found enough to last a lifetime; and no matter what I find the difference lies in how it is carried. If I return with regret in my belly I have stopped too early. True gifts take time and leave the heart lighter. If it feels like lead, it should be left, for it is already dead or dying, and will only make a mess of it. Too often I have brought death home with me, mistaking its face for an old friend. But I’m learning now that my rooms are for what’s living, leaving the rotting to the compost pile where it can shift to fertility, where it can become nutrient and dense for the seeds I find worth planting. 

I don’t know what I’m searching for, but I know it is always changing, always shifting, always shaping the path before me; which I walk with bare feet, slow and steady, listening closely to the call of what I am in the act of remembering. I have seen the gates of the future garden carved with a face that looks a lot like my own, so I rely on recognition, sharpen my sight and go digging some more until I find a glimmer of hope, a seedling of love, and the undoing of lies that I’ve persisted too long. 

I don’t know what I’m searching for, but as long as my heart beats, I will keep on looking.