Sacred Contracts XI: Letting Go

         
I.        
It's like threadbare memories of an old t-shirt holding          
onto the scent of one hundred year-old vines in the heat          
of a South American vineyard. The dirty aroma and sweat          
of twelve hours between the mountain and valley trek          
through shale flaking beneath worn boots, gritty jeans          
ripped at the knee, and the weight of the pack rubbing          
across your drenched back. It's leaning against the old tree          
at the top of the ledge that you've come to depend on        
to keep you from sliding over the edge and becoming a part          
of the scenery. It's in you, familiarity, a settling you've come          
to know and cherish, a present history you want to hold onto          
in a constant world demanding you let go and consume          
until your wallet is riverbed dry and your happiness is owned          
by credit cards and mortgage companies refusing to let loose.          
         
II.        
Letting go isn't necessarily what you think, it's not walking        
away from; it's not the release and return of something precious    
that never belonged to you to begin with. It's not the retreat      
or distance, but surrender to whatever the moment has created      
beneath your own feet whether from beauty or mistake.      
It's not an escape but an accepting penetration of its hold;      
it's living for difference upon a knowing you've come to realize      
is skewed; it's mapping the course from where you stand;      
It's patiently believing in the warm breath that will clear the pass      
and smooth the dagger'd circumstance you must live with.        
         
II.        
Not everything lets go of the winter for a southern spring          
or burrows from the cold. Not everything flees the first sign          
of frost on the forest floor to hibernate; the cardinal buttons          
the grey ice across the lycopodium moss, and together          
they weather the frigid days ahead with softness and song,          
with color and reminder of warm magic to come like the ludic          
behavior of children in the snow, or upon knees against beds        
in dark insensate nights praying direly from fear of loss        
to an unseen source of innate safety for the lives of loved ones          
purely believing the alabastrine presence that heard and granted      
their wish to reap each aging, sacred thread of winter-white hair          
as a perpetual blessing from the trusted sowing of letting go.            
~          
         
         
Image by Finn Olav Olsen