Early morning rain

"In the early morning rain

With a dollar in my hand

With an achin in my heart

And my pockets full of sand

Im a long way from home

And I miss my loved ones so

In the early morning rain

With no place to go"

(Gordon Lightfoot)

the restless beast within, tossing and turning, recognition of the gift of life and how it has or has not been recognized, the gift of creativity and the strength of his beastly body, how they have or have not been acknowledged and what prayers of gratitude have or have not been lifted, today is new, this moment is new, and within this day and this early morning moment the gratitude flows and the prayers are sent up, but with that is the acknowledgement of the face turned away from the light, the decline into invulnerability, calculation, denial of intuition, stilling the small voice inside of conscience, how many thousands of times and ways has this been my choice, my beastly human choice, for i am a soul in an animal's body, and the instinctual grace of the animal and the soaring reaches and depths of the soul are not in competition or disharmony when they are allowed full play, held up to the light, like the earth and sky, the water the fire the conversation flows in all directions, and i am grateful and bleeding off my shame through darkness and pain, feeling the weight of those years and releasing that weight in the same breath, perhaps not my last dark night of the soul, nor my first, but certainly this was one.