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Poetry Corner

Em Claire, from her just published compendium Silent Sacred Holy Deepening Heart. You may insert any of these works in your online magazine with permission from the author, if you will be kind enough to include the small credit line at the conclusion of each.

Thank you

Neale Donald Walsch

The Longing

Do not pretend that The Longing

has not also lived in you,

swinging like a pendulum.

You have been lost,

and thieved like a criminal,

your Heart into the darkness.

But life is tired, Deep Friend,

of going on

without you.

It is like the hand of the mother

who has lost the child.

And if you are anything like me, you have been afraid. And if you are anything like me,

you have known your own courage.

There is room in this boat:

take your seat.

Take up your paddle, and all of us

- All of Us -

shall row our hearts

back Home.

UNRELENTING GRACE

Life conspires to bless us with an

unrelenting Grace.

Who among us has not been touched by this generous hand,

freeing us,

one

or many layers

at a time?

You are the lucky one

who has known annihilation

and then absorption

back into the Love

we seek.

And it is you who knows

that even as the soul-cry rends your very chest

the whole of the Universe

shakes with Love.

In this place of All

there is at long, long last

no place

left

to fall.

THREE DOGS KNOWING

They don’t set out to do anything grand.

They play, the three of them:

Black and Burr-ridden,

Speckled and Bright-eyed,

Sleek and Questioning.

Every morning the play continues,

tugging one another this way and that

along throughout a day.

If He sits, scratching and gazing out across

the great divide of valleys,

She will bring Him an enduring piece of hat

or garden hose

or the last fourth of a plastic ball

and drop it at His feet.

If the One with the moon-colored eyes

lies in the ivy,

with sun on Her ribs

and leaves in Her ears

the other two will attack mid-dream

with nip and tug at neck and tail.

It is pure genius and heart.

Three dogs living out The Mystery every moment,

while it slips like water

through all of my grasping.

What Is It That You Were Given?

What is it that you were given?

I mean from the loss.

After, what was taken.

That very thing you could never live without.

The person or place;

the secret, or circumstance -

now that it is gone,

or has been found out,

and you can no longer call it foundation

what is it that you were given?

You know, and I know, this:

there is a hollowing out.

Something comes and opens you up

right

down

the

middle

and from that moment on

you are no longer immune to this world.

You wake, you wander,every familiar,

now a foreign.

You walk as through water

until you make it back to your bed

and finally, even there—

your sheets; your own pillow’s scent different,

as if daily someone repaints your room,

displaces something, disturbs a cherished memento.

You see,

sometimes we are emptied.

We are emptied

because

Life wants us to know

so

much

more

Light.

@ Em Claire - from the compendium: Silent Sacred Holy Deepening Heart www.emclairepoet.com