Photo by Sam Kolder
If the alter of my faith could change, take these garbs and replace their many folds with the confessions my heartbeats alone could not gamble fairly, would the meditation I surrender find its way to a new body/ one which wisdom failed selfish interest and whose design flowed by will the requirement of paradise/ not an angry devouring of the spirit/ and expansion of its radiance meant to survive many winters.
Surpass the nature of this mother who hath made recognized the bounty she has laid to be followed/ that what flourish cannot happen without adopting her habit/ and find again this rest.
Would I be a bird without arms/ but eyes the type that field an array so artfully I could never fly into a single one of my own. Could I stand to be without this body, to nest peaceably within any element, evade any storm as a choir. Could I give up words but retain song enough to usher light to its calling, be a harbinger of peace, a messenger of color, to herald offerings the dusk could never falter.
Would I be a friend without greed/ could I discard past judgment, begrudge me the change, not the change around me. I must make to this new body a shrine to the temple of many sacrifices, a beam the bird follows when the storm of indifference demands the wind be seen, a precursor to the tide, eminent the flood. The hate must be abated. Take what remains from my old veins, and keep them free of this seat.