Always a Ripening

Always a ripening.

Never a sudden instant flowering.

Even surprises have taken time

to unfold into their proper places

to find their cues to perfect execution.

Not so much predestination as

consequences of choices,

last-minute changes of mind,

the crucial or fatal wavering of a heart.

What comes about stands upon

an intricate structure of cause and effect.

We stand here, seeing nothing,

imagining clean slates and square ones,

when really, it is all connected,

way back to when we were unborn seeds.

But woven into the bones

of our original stories, 

are the threads that pull us beyond

the limits of our original definitions.

The givens are never final

unless we allow them to be.

If we paid attention we would discern

the path through the labyrinths,

we would feel the tug 

of an inner compass, and we would not

get repeatedly lost

in the ever-tightening vicious cycles 

of unlearned lessons, of deaths by default.

If we practised patience, and dared 

to walk the way of our hearts, then 

one day it will all make sense,

why some things were denied,

why some things were taken away,

why many things had to hurt,

why it all had to take so long,

and take so much out of us,

Listen. It all comes to something.

Always a ripening,

but only when we let ourselves begin.

Nothing grows

if nothing is planted.

Nothing ripens

if nothing is nurtured.

We are nothing

if we are not ourselves.