Reach down to touch the waiting earth
that there beneath your feet, alive,
in constant movement hurls through space
and yet seems solid in the place
where through your bones, like vibrant roots
its energy expands and shoots,
infusing marrow, flesh and bone
with strength from every tree and stone.
Reach up into the far flung sky
that just beyond your tiptoed grasp
becomes the wind that pulls you on
and turns to clouds, and then is gone
until you slowly breathe it back
to watch the gap begin to slack
between each molecule of air
until there’s only one space there.
Reach in beneath your surface skin
under the epidermis where
a million cells each pulse with life;
dig deeper, like your mind’s a knife
that probes each inch of sinew, vein,
and stretch of bone from toe to brain,
until you find your inner core
that will live on when you’re no more.
Reach out just past your fingertips
and touch the edge your sense permits
where science teaches your range ends
and leaves to faith what there begins
connected by some unseen thread
that spins between the live and dead
transcending time, and thought, and space
in patterns saints and madmen trace.
Reach all around, hands outstretched wide
and offer out what is inside
Push up what fills you from below
Pull down an armful, then let go
Expand in all directions, free,
Beyond logic and sanity
Past expectations, good and ill
Grasp all of life. Come, get your fill.
23 APR 2005
