A thunder of angels drops through parting clouds Eyes and wings for days—“Be not afraid”— Each one of us is a giant. Our bodies are built from ancient strata, the slow reckoning of ages across an abacus of eyes & teeth. Take my hand. Feel through its flesh the echo of the heart’s faithful clock, the prayerful twisting of sinews, tugged toward some new presence. All around us are eyes, jewel-like motes in air, twinkling compassion, encouragement, goodwill. Do as you will. As you must. Let be done through you what has been rolling through time like a storm across wide plains, heavy with water & flung soil, flashing light. Under such a sky, what use is the flatness of “should” & “ought”? Let these be ornaments jangling, bangles clashing on the ankles of a dancing god. Let these be spices, toning herbs: not food but medicine. Neither beginning nor end, your hesitations: middle moments, unresolved chords, Blind tunneling—groping your way through. The smell of earth close-in all around. The compulsion to shape with the hands not a vision—no, not from this blindness— but an instinct, a felt memory, flesh-made-of-earth giving birth to we-know-not-what. Not yet. —— Play never ends— play’s the thing; all your brow-furrowed struggling is play that’s forgotten itself, lost its laughter. Snap your fingers, relax your gaze, pat those cheeks till they’re rosy! Wiggle! See, here’s spirit, fresh & lively, inside of you all along. The prisons of seriousness you built with bricks of old pain aren’t so substantial after all; what you thought was stone is just ice, and it’s melting in the light of your heart’s sun, trickling, trickling, now streaming away to rejoin the unbounded ocean. As go these waters so go old stories, beliefs too small & hard-shelled to suit you any longer, that must be shed, just as the oak outgrows the acorn. Ice to water; water to gas. Now we let the past be past. Little games reflect the infinite game; the heart’s sun reflects the eternal light. As I rest in emptiness-fullness all lives & times visit me; all loves & births play out their journey-songs; worlds fly through vast space, their molten cores dreaming up new forms. Life-craft of volcanoes & storms, young atmospheres & promising primordial seas— All this visits me in the space that surrounds each breath, blink, beat; all this is a gift— Not mine to keep, but mine to give. Not mine to keep, but mine to give. ___ *May 2021* *Thanks, Be’erit/Raven, for the prompt: "Peter Pan"*