By Avallina Balestri (alias Rosaria Marie)
Word Count: 371
Rating: G (suitable for audiences)
Summary: A poet hopes to be a small voice for beauty and Truth.
Let my life be spent out
Like the smallest of birds,
Winging its way from forest freedom
To the flame-speckled hut
To the wild air again.
She comes to sing her song
As she was ever meant to do
And death is consummation
Of her call.
She knows peace.
Is she not the essence of the universe?
Let me spend life weaving
A spiral of sanctuary songs,
Insignificant in scope,
Yet fundamental in nature.
Let me make my mark
As the arrow of love flies
From the harp string plucked,
Let me play the heart’s notes
In the silence.
Does not the quiet speak the richest language?
Let me shield a flame
In the darkness,
A lantern held aloft
To the slice of the wind
That will not surrender
Nor be dimmed
No matter how small it seems
In the dark night,
In the dark woods,
When the straightway seems lost.
Are all who wonder truly lost?
Cleaved by the unknowing
And burned by the knowing,
Should I fear the final sacrifice,
The final shedding of this outer self
Which we would daily strip
To make love to the fire in the head,
To kiss the lips of the soul?
Are we not all called to the same consummation?
Are the stories of the soul so bloodied
They cannot live again?
Or are they a circle
Ever weaving around
And rising rooted?
For we are born of starlight
And breath upon the dust,
And we fall and rise
Lesser to Greater,
All Powerful, to All Vulnerable.
Is the suffering not the molding of the clay?
We are given the task of planting
And our seeds must split open
And bleed out their essence
Before they are reborn,
A rainbow being
Submerged in the coursing
Of new blood, new life
Of energy, of light
Of the Great Song
Of the Wild Hunt
Of all that is and all that is not
Of the Ecstasy of the saints.
Can any words convey the Song of Songs?
Then let my life be as my death,
Spent out in search of the Song,
And let me meet the raven’s flight
Through the blood of the Lamb.