revelation

REVELATION MUST BE TERRIBLE

Revelation must be
    terrible with no time left
to say goodbye.

Imagine that moment,
   staring at the still waters,
with only the brief tremor

of your body to say
   you are leaving everything
and everyone you know behind.

Being far from home is hard, but you know,
   at least we are all exiled together.
When you open your eyes to the world

you are on your own for
   the first time. No one is
even interested in saving you now

and the world steps in
   to test the calm fluidity of your body
from moment to moment,

as if it believed you could join
   its vibrant dance
of fire and calmness and final stillness.

As if you were meant to be exactly
   where you are, as if,
like the dark branch of a desert river

you could flow on without a speck
   of guilt and everything
everywhere would still be just as it should be.

As if your place in the world mattered
   and the world could
neither speak nor hear the fullness of

its own bitter and beautiful cry
   without the deep well
of your body resonating in the echo.

Knowing that it takes only
   that first, terrible
word to make the circle complete,

revelation must be terrible
   knowing you can
 never hide your voice again.

-- David Whyte

When I got into bed tonight I pulled my David Whyte River Flow book of poetry into my lap. I held it in my hands, breathing deeply and just feeling the warmth of the pages between my fingers. I absorbed David's words through my hands and slowly rested upon a poem. Opening my eyes and looking at the pages, I read the words, and then I read them again, as I do with all of his works. This one resonated with me so much that I felt pulled to the keyboard to not only type his words, but then to write from my heart what those sentiments mean to me in the moment.

I am now at the precipice of that revelation, that knowing that my voice cannot be hidden or silenced again. I opened my heart to what I breathed in as the truth for me, the angelic wings of knowingness after a long blackened cocooned lifetime. The revelation of seeing the light once that cocoon was broken open turned my world, and continues to do so, upside down. I am discovering moment by moment that what I had once deemed true, so true that I would have bet my life on it, is not what I thought all along. The revelations keep showing up. They are terrible in the sense that I must learn to fly with my new wings, but first I have to figure out how to pull this new body out of the small hole I managed to make for my emergence.

I am on my own again with less stuff weighing me down. I carry less inhibitions, less expectations, less certainty, and less rigidness. My calm is fluid. I stare as if I have for the first time opened my eyes and seen the world anew. I poke my head out and wonder what's before me. Is there anything to tether me? To silence me? I test my new voice. It echoes in the stillness. A tear meanders down my cheek. I lift myself free from the darkness within, struggling with the tightness of the familiar, but yet yearning for the adventure of the unknown. I look about me, around me, and above me. The colors sustain me. I am clothed in beauty I have just now only grasped. I breathe in the blue, the green, the purple, and do not recognize their scents, but I am willing to step forward and smell the unfamiliar, to take it in with each breath, and awaken to the magic of stepping a foot forward on shaky ground knowing that if my foot slips I will be carried safely by my wings.