The Time it Takes to Grow a Soul

The time it takes
to grow a soul

can vary
on any given day.

A blade of grass
holds fresh dew;

a river bed
repels its wetness.

Can we measure the
cosmos with a clod of dirt?

A brown leaf blows
in the wind, sending
its rattle straight

into the heart
through the eyes
and through the ears.

A calm ripple courses
over the surface
of the imminent self;

a beacon opens a
light out onto a vista
that becomes our way home.

A river takes a bend
by a lolling force that
could free a house -

and all its belongings -
from the moorings
that held it fast.

A remembrance is
brought to the fore
of the mind;

an old impression
opens us to the familiar.

It is as if we can
never know the measurements
for the bread we bake.

Simple or grand,
the soul is built on
these moments;

and, the moments
in-between
these moments.

The force that enters
our humanness is what
shapes us and the

souls we grow.

From that land -

from that soul-scape -

we become the thing
that we have allowed
all things to make us.

What we allow says
more about our soul-self
then anything we could
pen or say with certainty.

I have heard so much
that does not match the
tenor of the reality I see
laced through life all around me.

A sunflower turns ever so
slightly in the glow of the morning
sun.  Now in one place;
and, then in another.

Can it pause or take
itself in a backward glance

toward what it saw yesterday?

Can a borrowed ocean
lead us to an evasive sunset
from an earlier day?

Is the growing of a soul
always now; always here;

or, can it be from
the echoes of footfalls

and dust-covered
rose-petals of an earlier

hall we did not
choose to darken?

Alas, who can say?
A moment crashes in on us

and carries us away
to the place of our person
that we are choosing

ourselves to become.
Beauty makes all
the difference.

Where will you
allow yourself to go
to become the "I"
of all becoming, Walt?

What sultry hymn
of our drudgery will
open a place inside
to hear the worth of
the beating heart, Walt?

Can a sparrow leave us
broken to the mysteries of
the sky?

Can a mountain pass freeze
our pride and place us back
in the holler of hallowed simplicity?

The dead, Walt, the dead
know for sure.  Whisper the words
into the sunrise for us;

scatter the meaning in the
desert sands.

Without the dead we would
be sore pressed to know.

The time it takes to grow a soul
is now, the place it takes to grow
a soul is here.