Can one be free of one’s ghosts?
Oh, believe in them: shadows of the past
unreleased, trailing their tatters,
still trying to be, unable to have been.
Look at us, bending over the stones,
always with such love and remorse.
To be free of them
you have to look. Touch and see.
Become permeable as a ghost,
the world seeping through you.
You have to become more real than ghost,
solid, touching, touched.
Run your heart’s fingers over the
smooth warm wood of this morning.
Notice the grain in the words
of the one speaking to you.
Let what is real consume
what is only suspected.
The shadow of a doubt
evaporates in light.
Its invisibility cloak disappears.
It finally dies, fading
from its belligerent shades
into the dark mass of real things,
the vanishment of regret forgiven,
the substance of beginning anew,
the heft of this day’s joy.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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