unshakable [poetry.]

reflective thoughts as the sun sets on my thirties.

Always been chasing the way love sets my soul on fire.
Wooed by misty mornings and the song the pond sings at night.
How come being barefoot makes my heart feel more alive?

I don’t know. And the older I get, the more I realize
I really don’t know much at all.

I thought grey hair would come with wisdom,
and deeply etched laugh lines might prove unshakable knowledge.
But the truth is, the only thing that has grown unshakable in me
is a comfort with not knowing.

Good God, the things I don’t know would fill libraries.
I guess that was always the case.
But now I have the keys, and sometimes I make love in the stacks
surrounded by my own lack.
And there, I throw my head back
and laugh louder than is appropriate.

Maybe that is what forty brings.
Maybe it’s the volume with which my laughter sings,
drowning out the whispers society insists
should accompany such things.
It is freeing to know all that you don’t.

I don’t hold answers, but God, love contains multitudes.
And even at my least, I contain a fierce and fighting love.

My crown is bursting with silver
and the great big world has grown awfully small.
I used to want a stage,
but now I am a fly on a wall.

How much deeper can I dig?
How much more can I let go?
How many layers of fear
can I shed like snakeskin,
stripped down to my skin?
Loose elastic,
marked by all my conquering, all my birthing.
Stretched and striped by all my fast growing,
and now, finally, slowing down to settle instead of gain.

And in that stillness,
a new vein of love or wisdom.
It is hard to really differentiate the two.

Me and you,
barefoot in thriving soil.
Me and you,
libraries made waste by laughter,
laid bare by dancing.
My very own undoing.

My very own control
hurled into the unknown.

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