Love what is here and love what is lost.

What was lost does not belong to us,
but the Grandmother and the Grandfather.

She sits, always stirring a cauldron,
filled with a purple potion. She never speaks.
Her creviced face a joy, whether she chooses to
share the brew with me. I am home.

When she offers, I gratefully drink.
Why would I ever refuse the Mother?
When has she ever let me down?
When has the purple potion ever not been a salve?

Gravity is love made concrete.
We are carried and cared for
in ways we cannot fathom.

Think of it.
Every moment of your life
you are being held.

It doesn't matter that it is also science.

Name it for what is really is.
Call it magic.
Call it grace.
Call it miracle
Call it love.

Magic is real. It is deeper than any story.
It is yours.

You may have forgotten.

Real as twilight,
orange light on the red cardinal wing.
The benedictions of the dog kisses.
All of life keeps trying to teach us.
how to live.

Her cave is his. Grandmother and Grandfather,
Always a fire under the cauldron.
There is a blanket there for me when I die.

He sits proud. He is. and has always been.
His power is a secret
I am not allowed to share.

Except through love, through bowing low
as even I am being cherished,
and this is what is true.
Serve him and I serve life.
I must trust his omniscence
only because he has always been right
for the many years I have been
his daughter.

These are matters of the soul.
If you do not sing every day,
your soul can remain silent.

Not the song, not a melody
but the utterances that live in your marrow
and in the hummingbird
and in the tree
the frog
the wounded bear
the owl outside your window
knows about night.
Listen to what rises.

Only children believe in magic
grown ups say
because the little ones live with their small hands
and their hearts and the veil is thin.
What they see, we do not.

The magic to remember is in the choice
to love what is and what has been lost.

The next tree you see has a miracle.
Trees, so generous, and always breathing
us into their roots,
always us breathing deep their sweet breath to live.
Only one gift of life that we never had to earn.

Shall we learn to bow our heads, and hold the tree
Long enough to receive and give
through our mutual touch and breath?
Long enough to notice and see?

Love what is here and what is lost.
This is how we remember why we are here.
Look and look and look.
and see your own face in the shape of bark.

Love everything you lost.
And what you have lost is not lost, and what you have you will always lose.
Be the rain.

You do not belong to yourself
but to the hum of love and the breathe of trees.