Grandfather, open

This is a poem dedicated to my grandfather, who passed before I was born. May the darkness become the light and in your stillness, may you dance.

I’ve carried your dreams in me, a pocket full of seeds.
For a long time,
I was hungry, but this hunger belonged to you.
It was you I was trying to feed and you
I was trying to love in every man.

I’ve watered you now like a tree in spring, brought roses to your grave
a flame to warm your stone body.
I’ve seen myself in you a hundred times
mirror to my interior landscapes
and I, your hope, you clung to me
my body your longing
my belly full of your yearning
your mouth in me speaking strange dreams.

I will open the buds of dreams
and with my fingers place you back where you belong;
I sing the song of your homecoming.

for I’ve tasted the same wine as you
and drank from these waters that drowned us
and I know
I know
I know
the textures of loss, the voice of alone-ness, the long-dark

And now, at the thresholds of being I stand
I, here
You, there
I hear you there
and welcome back
to our house of belonging.

******



I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing: wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing: there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. T.S Eliot