The Time It Takes To Grow A Soul - rewrite

I

The time it takes

to grow a soul

can vary

on any given day.

Like the crafting

of a poem, some

come full-born into

the light of day

with ease;

others not, take

full coaxing out

of their shadow

to reveal the tartan

of the heart.

II

Now I sense

your focused purpose

and measured plan

in growing the

Leaves of Grass

slowly over a

lifetime of expression

and ease. Disentangling

meaning and sound

from the lineaments

of a soul that had felt

the arrival of a new

way of writing

the heart of a nation.

III

It may be

accomplished in the

twinkling of an

eye; or it may take

a slow and steady

nurturing – day

in and day out.

A blade of grass

holds the fresh dew

it takes as sustenance;

a river bed

repels this same wetness.

IV

We may not know

how the growth will

show itself or how

long it will be around,

spreading itself out

to the far corners of

our understanding and

presence..

Can we measure the

cosmos with a clod of dirt?

Can we know

tomorrow in a

butterfly’s wing?

V

A brown leaf blows

in the wind, sending

its rattle straight

into the heart

through the eyes

and through the ears –

leaving an impression;

changing all it

touches on its

entrance in to the

person.

A calm ripple courses

over the surface

of the imminent self;

a shudder of understanding.

A beacon opens

light out onto a vista

that becomes our way home;

a direction we may not

have made in the dark.

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 only

a moment just before.

A remembrance is

brought to the fore

of the mind;

an old intuition

opens us to the familiar;

and all at once

what was – IS;

in an instant

what is not yet

IS as well.

We can

never know the measure –

one time to the next –

for the bread we bake.

VI

How will we know,

brother of the universe,

when this subtle or

exaggerated change is

about to set itself upon us.

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.

VII

The snow drapes itself

almost endlessly –

somewhat eternally

over the craggy

outcroppings of

red shale and cedar.

I have heard so much

that does not match the

tenor of the reality I see

laced through life all around me.

People point us in a

way they wish us to attend.

We are constantly given only

pieces of what we could

know; what others would

have us to be able to

figure out.

Nature, Walt,

nature does

not discriminate toward

the bias.

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?

Or choose to only take

a portion of the sun’s rays

to be its own?

VIII

A memory of a gray

and swelling sea

crosses the horizon

of my me.

Can a borrowed ocean

lead us to an evasive sunset

from an earlier day? Or,

only cascade the shore

with what it chooses

to send?

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?

IX

It takes the subtle

speech of all we

cannot see; it

takes the intrusive waves

of inkling and of hunch.

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;

and yet it cannot

only be just now

and here.

It must also hold

a numinous hand

out toward the fading

“then” and allusive “there”.

What was,

and is,

and

is to yet

become

are woven

seamlessly and

unbeknownst

into the

tartan of our days.

A soul is grown

in this way,

a me becomes itself.