Belonging

I was sitting in the coffee shop with my Dad

Drinking a cup of coffee, waiting to pick up my children

And I realized how good it is to belong to people

He gave the best years, all of them, 

For my Mom and me and my sisters and brothers

To care for us because we belonged to Him

There is a bond between us; a union of life

Part of my soul is inside of him

And part of his soul lives inside of me

I can’t explain it, but that is how it is

We belong to one another

The same is with my dear one.

We’ve been sharing love and joy and pain

Laughter and tears;

Children and grandchildren now

For more than 25 years

Part of each of us lives inside the other

I’d like to explain this to my children

But I’m not sure they would understand it

It might sound more like restriction than

Realizing part of one’s true self

Is to belong to another

But maybe when I am eighty

And we’re sitting at the coffee shop or somewhere else

They will see what I see now

How good it is to belong.

Maybe they’ll see it sooner than me.

An Old Soul

I want to be an old soul

And a child

An ocean and a brook

A mountain and a stone

I want my feet planted like roots

Deep in the bowels of the earth 

To be one and apart

I want my soul like a bird

Alight with every sight and sound

And breeze and scent on the wind

To know your thoughts 

Without knowing

To move like a river without will

As free as a child who skips

To the music in her mind

As steadfast as a tree 

Which grows in all weather.

Rememberers

The world needs rememberers

To tell us once again

Of stories some time ago

So that we can send our roots down deep

In the past we do not know

Of fishing and cooking and games once played

Of first steps early taken

Of crops and struggles and fears and pain

And making it through somehow

By remembering those who came before

Whose labours and laughter had served them well

That we might remember them now

We all need rememberers 

That we might finally know

From where we've come

And who we are 

And the way that we should go.

The Silence

I seek for what is found in silence

The face I recognize 

Who sets my mind at ease

Who drifts through my thoughts

Separating the wheat from the chaff

I dwell upon the quiet

For it is not the absence of noise

But the presence

The presence of he who knows and is known

Who speaks without uttering a sound

I rest within the stillness

For there I find

I find myself waiting for me

Waiting to show me and

To speak my name

Dan Wills (2013)