Cathedral

If I could, I would build you a cathedral of words, to welcome you home A place of thanksgiving, where you can reach and stretch and break in love Remembering children born and friends lost Remembering how you dreamed and fell and rose again Remembering when the depth of your longing and your fear of not being enough finally brought you to your knees to at last find peace in the perfect vulnerability of surrender If I could, I would raise the poles of a huge teepee about us all, pointing to the stories written on the skin of the walls, where the buffalo run and turn the earth to a great drum with the thunder of their passing Where whales dive to listen to the secrets of the black depths and return to blow rainbow fountain kisses to the air and the sun I would show you how eagles dive with a great rush of feather and wind and mice dance across pristine snow, leaving strange runes for the fox to read You belong, you belong in that circle of light with the everything and the ancestors, as you take your undeniable place in the one great dance If I could, I would lead you to the pool of grief I would lead you to the pool of grief and ask you to drink from the midnight water there So that you could feel at last the searing ache of miracles broken by greed Where trees burn like torches lighting the way to some plastic wrapped paradise That quiet water would speak in the voice of tears and your very bones will weep Your very bones will weep as our heritage of suffering and war can at last be felt and seen Taking the strength from your legs and ripping the false crown from your brow So that you may finally, finally, mercifully, mercifully fall to the waiting earth in grief Which opens its arms like a mother to bless you with love and endless, endless forgiveness If I could, I would open a doorway into the green heart of the earth, a gateway of branches and leaves and feathers and bones through which you could pass, leaving your clothes of culture In a messy and confused pile while you dance free and naked and wild in the rain and the mud whirling with hairy spirits and the old gods of the green I would lie with you in the perfect dew drop dampness of a forest, clearing lush with bluebells their broken stems, smelling of life and sex as we roll and kiss and moan in the goodness life calling to life and singing new songs into being eggs and sperm and ovaries playing the strings of miracle as we sound our pleasure like bears and honey If I could, I would weave the incense, smoke of ancient temples like a cloak about your shoulders, the rich and Simple cloth shot through with streaks of gold and red and deep blue, coloured by the aching songs of our Small lives, our small lives that are pressed up against the truth of an existence where our Hearts are adrift, our hearts are adrift in a mighty sea of presence, a great garden where stars bloom in the Meadows and flowers shine in the night sky, lighting the way to the one altar The one altar where we must all come to weep and to laugh and to die If I could, I would sing with you the harmony of your perfect messy heartbreaking human life For this is the clay that we have in our hands that we must meet and shape anew each day I love the places where you break, where the stories that you tell about yourself are twisted Like branches in the wind, beliefs falling like leaves to bless the earth with their dying Tell me of your sadness and your fear and I will tell you of mine, our voices cracking To reveal the light of which we are made, our tired humanity the pathway to surrender and a laugh like a Colourful woollen blanket on a windswept beach holding us all in a perfect embrace of kind arms and warm Hands If I could, I would build you a home A home where you may know peace with every breath that breathes you, you would know peace Because I love you Because I love you Because I love you