The How of Longing

Longing is what you make of it…

or perhaps what it makes of you.

A shadow of wholeness shaped to your will,

it may lift toward God,

bring mother to child

or push for sex and candy.

Sometimes it’s the scent of roses in still air.

Other times it’s all rush and sudden storm.

Often it’s a deep lava strumming your soles

on its way to the sea.

Go ahead, grab wholeness round the waist

and wrestle it to the mat.

It won’t mind if you win.

Just know the prize is need amid plenty.

In time, all incomplete ways complete,

you sing the song your reaching sings

and wholeness succors

your thousand daily journeys.

No thing is too small or large then,

not the eyes of a child

nor dew at daybreak nor moonrise,

not stock markets nor illness nor war.

When you know longing in its many guises,

where it lives, what it eats

and the cities of action

you’ve clustered about it,

reaching becomes its own reward,

all open arms and nettles,

a bittersweet, have-and-have-not thing

cutting both ways.

In this just-so place, wholeness rises to meet you,

a compass out of time tracking true direction

or some great, gravity-setting mass

drawing self closer to Self.

There are no demands.

Just ever-changing, restless becoming

and you as you are at every moment.