Poem: The Seed
"At the end of it all, love is what survives."
The Seed "Trust me. This darkness is a place you can enter and be as safe in as you are anywhere" – Margaret Atwood, “Interlunar” Depression is a funny thing. You wake up and suddenly your body feels so much heavier, thick and syrupy with the weight of some unknown, inscrutable suffering which you now have to try and figure out. The birds don’t sing anymore, the world looks flat and grey, and everything tastes like air. Poetry becomes impossible. We know that love will not save us, and yet we keep chasing it, hopeless addicts searching for our next fix, a dose of whatever chemical might mend our splintered, tired hearts. But what else are we expected to do? At the end of it all, love is what survives. When the dead have died, when beauty crumples under its own expectations, there will be nothing else left. It’s in the dust, filling our molecules. The very universe expands with love for itself. When the forests have burned to the ground, and all that was is cold embers, black and fertile, a single seed takes root, clings to open soil, starts anew.
"The very universe expands / with love for itself."
Oh wow, this is amazing. I mentioned in another newsletter's comments how I keep seeing messages like this scattered among my reading lately -- to notice joy, to act always with kindness, to understand love as the root of everything. The universe making its wishes known, I'm realizing.
The tiny work of each tenacious seed is as radically new as the grand creation stories of Genesis and elsewhere; something wasn't and then it was.
Jack, thank you for sharing your wonderful work, a seed itself inspiring further reflection.