Nothing is yours except the essential things –
air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky.
~Cesare Pavese
This lonely windblown instant on the gravelly edge
of a muddy middle-of-nowhere parking lot
right before the storm.
This sweet and sweaty apple-blossomed breeze
drifting dusty-fingered across your skin
ready to be smelled.
Air is yours.
This shadow hair’s breadth sheltering your eyes
extracting exhaustion out of achy muscles
restoring worn-out cells.
This brilliant way to put the world on hold
temporary cessation of suffering
rewarding work well-done.
Sleep is yours.
These fragments of intangible alternative
semi-sublime subconscious tessellations
constructing a way out.
These liquid-mirror tremblesome reflections
thrill-shot with an impulsive oblique shimmer
of something else and other.
Dreams are yours.
This vast, ship-eating rhythm of infinitude
sucking sand from underneath your feet
back to its throbbing soul.
This crushing depth of interstellar density
rocking salt-surf giving you a reason
to reach the other side.
The sea is yours.
This architect of all unanswered questions
star-speckled absurdity of agelessness
glimpse of greater worlds.
This lonely paradoxical iconoclast
never tired of surprising earth-sick eyes
with archaic cloud-patterns.
The sky is yours.
All this is given. In order that you
may remember, may not forget that
nothing is yours except the essential
except the liminal something in your
body that responds, for just as long as
you are able to keep yourself enchanted.
Nothing is yours except what is given.
‘God only gives, and has only Himself
to give.’ Maybe that is what it means?
Nothing is yours except God.