Cedar, will you answer?
Beneath a cedar tree, buzzing, my hands encountered my heart on their journey toward the sky, and a stubborn, earthen clarity arose where their paths crossed—Oh blessed, cursed, clarity.
What good is a truth that hurts? I know the answer, but I ask because I love.
Cedar, will you give me an answer?
What crooked hand takes those we love? Where are they kept? Tell me, do they have good company there? Music and laughter to pass the time?
Cedar, will you answer?
For I think I’d like to know,
and take that knowledge high,
for people's eyes to see the truth.
Maybe it would open their hearts.
For all have lost—are losing, will lose—what they love so dearly.
That blessed,
cursed,
clarity.
And so sunlight shines down, the shape of our life ever-changing.
Cedar, will you answer?
I have no strength that I can call my own, save the aspirations in my heart and a blessed perseverance. For I am a simple man, prone to error and mistakes, and though I try to walk in peace and virtue, the path is steep and goes through many dark passages.
Today, I wonder: Have I lost the love that made my life complete?
And then, tomorrow, I may feel I set a caged eagle free. We do not, and cannot, know the shape of life as a result of our actions. Life simply unfolds. It unwinds and reveals all the glorious, hidden things that lurked beneath the surface of its winding path; treasures and darkness go hand-in-hand, and life, once set free, gives us both, though we know not which for a long, long while.
Truth, though, is a virtue well worth the action. If we act with truth in our hearts, as best as we are able, then truth and love come to us and those around us.
That is, at least, the honest hope of my heart.
A cool breeze brushes my face, and caresses the weariness in my soul.
What Gods made the ones we love most, most certain to fade away?
I suppose that is why this world is not always a happy place, though it is immense and boundless in its beauty. Truth is always a happiness-pain. They are one and the same.
And so, beneath the cedar trees abuzzing, I asked a wordless question to no one in particular, and I found myself enveloped in the stone of a time unknowable, the song of water rushing down from above.
For a moment: peace enough to feel the weight of sadness buried in my chest.
Then, the sun broke through the clouds, and this tired heart still smiled and wept in waves of gratitude for the abundance that abounds, even after we have lost so much.
Cedar, tell me: why love what death can touch?
Because it can.
And that makes your love
all the stronger,
in this wild, painful world
of starlight and beauty,
and your blessed,
honest
heart.
