What I Believe

What is it to be lost in life's throes,
when I know what I want, even what I believe?
I want to work with body in the morning
and write with hand and mind after noon.
Maybe I want a small parcel of land, not to own but to tend.
To grow the food We eat, to live in a home that comes into itself 
	like a temperament. 
I want to cook like my life depends on it, 
sustenance I've planted and watered and cared into existence. 
And I want to share it generously.


I want Meaning out of ordinary tasks,
ritualistic acts that stabilize time. 
I want to know a Place like a lover.
Not only the history that came before,
but for knowing I'll be there
	for what has not yet come to pass.
That when my foresight has gone, that of my children's will carry on.
I want those children to run in the forests and fields. 
I want cats that take cat naps in the lofts of the barn. 


I do not believe I'm wanting for too much.
Only what most humans at one time had.
But what else I want is: 
	to not do it alone.
I fight against Individuality's lie:
that personal endeavor, at the expense of the collective sever,
is not the loneliest place in the world. 


I do not believe in the perfect match.
They say opposites both attract and repel.  
I do not believe we have but one soulmate, 
as much as we give ourselves to one soul at a time. 
Not so much to mate but to dance the path to fate.
And they are the One I found,
	that other piece who made this life round.


I do not believe that people stay the same.
We're either built up or torn down,
	each of us masons.
Some homes take a lifetime—some crumble in a day. 
I do not believe that I am Good enough
to receive what I seek to give. 
I do not give what I think I give.
Surely they are more to me, than I to them?


I do not believe in Heaven
as some faraway place.
But a moment between moments:
a ray of sunlight through the trees. 
I do not believe the trajectory of my beliefs to be a mystery.
Every book shapes me, draws me forth.
I could be an Atheist—
	if I believed I wanted to be.


I'm told to believe January shouldn't be this warm,
that all is lost, our future forlorn. 
Does this Machine have another direction?
Is the difference between passenger and driver
	but a matter of perspective?
I do not want to believe that we are doomed, 
But rather in hope, that infinite replete. 


I do not believe one should possess two homes
before others rest, warm, inside one of their own.
Our path to wealth, built upon scarcity—
a house is to be a Home, not a commodity.


I do not believe that size, or accumulation, or radiance
play a weighty role.
Nor money, nor status, nor certainty—
	It is Spirit that gives.
For I would take a modest, unknowing, calloused 
Presence
for an abundant, immeasurable Life. 


I do not believe these words are lasting or closed to discuss.
Yet, 
for now, 
what I believe is thus.