Maybe yours is meant for a deep valley,
or perhaps it will be washed clean from your brow at the riverside.
It could be lifted from you by a human embrace
or an unexpected glance standing in line at a busy coffee shop.
Sometimes,
with the mystery of the way the soul works,
it can be taken from you in the midst of a dream,
leaving you fresh and child-like with the arrival of morning
as if you didn't have to do a thing.
Mine is a hardscrabble road
that leads to the mountaintop
where I lift mine up
to all there is
the way I was taught.
But whoever you are, for goodness sake,
please listen to me when I say:
Grief has to move.
Through you, and beyond you, grief seeks a release.
It isn't to be feared.
It is a rare golden dove with a temporary roost inside you,
all so it can carry
what you need to let go
into the heart of the sun.
Once you open and release,
and once it arrives into that fiery embrace,
your renewal is moments away.
But if you hold onto it,
grief becomes stored in your bones
and that will be your undoing.
Much of the world
is not what it could be
all because of people holding on to an ancient grief.
(c) 2017 / Pure Land Poetry / Frank LaRue Owen (Wandering Stone Lantern) / purelandpoetry.com
sound: Mountain Above, Mountain Below, from Watermusic, by Remco Helbers