Solstice

The longest day.  The darkest day.                                                                                

Both asking us to take the time to let them pass.                                                      

With gratitude for the request to allow and not push through.                               

Why hurry?  Why force?  Why not flow?  Why not wait for the time to be right?  

Listen to the wisdom of these opposite days that say the same thing.                 

You will know the time.

And so, how am I today?                                                                                                                                

I am flowing.  I am ready.  I am spying the opportunities and possibilities.            

To learn.  To grow.  To let go.  To see a path ahead.  Or maybe many paths.    

Each an invitation.  None more right than another.                                                 

What a gift, this freedom to unfurl, to uncurl from the pause and ask myself,

Where?

And who? Who am I as the days return?                                                                                                                            

So many words that none land fully in my eyes to be seen.                                

Which shall I capture?                                                                                                        

Am I the opportunity and the possibility?                                                                      

The pause and the movement, the many paths, the freedom?                                    

I am.  Is that enough?  I think, perhaps, it is.                                                                 

This glorious ability to be, without boundaries or cage.

 What’s on the surface?  Perhaps a smile?                                                                             

To invite you into my depths, if I like you.                                                                    

The surface is smooth and gives little hint of what might be found underneath. 

Just the opportunity or possibility of more, but only if you take them,                     

I offer, but I won’t force the giving.  A gift is for accepting.                                         

It is an agreement.

For what is underneath is for sharing only with those who choose to see.    

There is safety in the choice, for you and me,                                                             

as we discover and explore the opportunities and possibilities together         

and allow ourselves to be changed forever by this new knowing.                            

I need you to be me in this form.                                                                                      

A synthesis of an opportunity and possibility accepted.                                       

Yes.  I am and am now more.

There is this third self to find.                                                                                     

When I am my third self the opportunities and possibilities are boundless.   

They are eternal.  They are unstoppable.  They are.  And I am.                            

And we are the more that we can ever be.                                                                 

For all the restraints that are put on us by those who don’t know are gone.    

Can you see us?  Have you accepted our invitation?                                              

For if not, all you will ever see is that small smile.                                                    

And perhaps that’s enough for you.                                                                           

And it’s enough for me to know that, when it comes to you and I,                        

it’s not enough for me.                                                                                                

When I am my third self I will fly away,                                                                       

and I wonder if you will wonder where I have gone?

“Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasionally in some of us, a tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity.”

Mary Oliver.