Beyond the Blue

With day after day of cold rains, I find myself looking beyond what I can see.

beyond the blue
hour – sky – eyes
how we are distilled
immortality

Goldenrod, queen's lace, and chicory all fade into the earth. Sparrows and wrens pick whatever is left and squirrels spend whole days earthing and re-earthing morsels. But what is beyond this?

When I close my eyes and see nothing, body pain still exists. Despite pain's constancy, with a little willingness to be open, even pain can exceed its role as oppressor.

Pain is not a punishment or a justification. It is an intercessory. It is a call to remember how one is never alone but is always a surrogate of all those who hurt. There seems to be a collectiveness to it.

We, the pained, supersede words with our groans. We are reduced to mutters or even silence, together. Utterances from beyond are collectively heard in the groans of the universe, the cycles of birth and rebirth, and the longing for a just order. Pain elicits and vocalizes the terrible and the wonderful, cries of prayer, critiques, pleasure and sermons, all at once.

I think of the moans and cries from those who suffered the Middle Passage, all different tongues, tribes and religions, all unable to communicate with one another apart from the guttural articulations of united suffering. I wonder if this drew each or some into contemplation, by which I mean, a displacement of the ordinary to a temporary refuge, spiritual attenuation, and a removal to a level of reality that allows distance from the external.

A removal which also unifies.

In this way, maybe pain is generative.

Perhaps pain is yet just another portal unto discernment of that which is real or a dream.

I am

beyond the blue –beyond bad luck or accident – beyond bruises – beyond the decay of body and mind – beyond the pain –

I am

groaning with the eternal collective
of sparrow, spruce and shaman –

I am
always
here.