ALL THAT GROWS

ALL THAT GROWS, GROWS OUT OF ME. The rose and the thorn the right and the wrong, they are sown in me as seeds and my soil needs to be tilled and fertilized, so that all may grow from me.

It is in me and germinates and emerges. Emergence, a coming out of myself into nature and all things around me, and somewhat like opening the windows and letting the world come in, tingling sensations of effervescence, a bubbling over of life, of love, of my being which can no longer be contained and seeks to come out of its cage and take flight. And the flower smiles at the bee. And the branches reach for the sky. And I feel laughter in my heart.

THEN THERE IS A SPLINTER IN THE MOMENT, a temporary annoyance, and it comes at the wrong time and is magnified thereby and casts a shadow upon the sun. The dog barks at the wind, and the wind blows the leaves off the tree, and I stand naked and shivering in the cold, and I begrudge you your smile, and withdraw. I sit and stare and look nowhere and am lost in a maze of feelings about my overall livingness that I do not understand. And I desperately seek to translate them into thoughts that would clarify the image and show me the reason for my latent discontent. But I fear, and my fear is greater than my confusion. And I return to my maze and sit and stare and look nowhere.

And it suddenly behooves me to let go and allow this intense personal upheaval to lead me to a new dimension where calm pervades and the air is filled with expectation.

THEN THE ROOSTER CROWS, and the sun comes over me and a new day is born. Like the first awakening of my love. A renewed manifestation of my being in this world. A renewed awareness of my coalescence with the things around me. A total sense of well-being and with it, the feeling of receptiveness and aliveness that the soil of my fertile self has volunteered.

ALL THAT GROWS, GROWS OUT OF ME, the rose and the thorn, the right and the wrong, the highs and the lows, they are all a part of me, and I need you . . . to understand.

Jay Frankston
Little River, CA 95456
wlp@mcn.org