Behold Our Random Carpet

Behold Our Random Carpet

Beneath my toes, cracked and bending now

In ways unimaginable when first you beheld them

You who were first and who did behold them

Countless tiny strands cut and disconnected

A tapestry together of all impressed upon them

Arbitrary this inscription of so many jumbled footsteps

Then coalescing for a moment as I think of you, and us

Into a map of love, or life, opaque and total

This gnarly pageant of meaning to which you invited

Blessing me and cursing me too, to behold

As you do, to love, as you do, to have faith, as you do.

Another impression made beautiful and crooked

Vainly inscribed as if permanent this all might be

Or futile as my fear, I also have learned to suggest

That your Gods might not all resemble mine

That the pathways and crevasses the lie beneath you

Are yours alone, as mine may be, as are ours all

Then in that divine moment, similarities do emerge

Between the character grotesque and sublime

That I beheld written into your feet, so many years ago

When I had years enough upon mine to see them

And now to behold them, as I do, to love them, as I do.

Older they and we grow, and further away perhaps

These memories, and clarities and footsteps before

But never apart, only more inscrutably together

As I watch you and feel that I am watched

As I love your Gods and learn to love my own

As I curse you while cursing really my toes

As I bless you while blessing really my souls

Does the dance of our space so tiny unfold

So vast and deep and hurried and slowed

For what done unto others is done unto us

And all that is done may be all we are owed.

Hear this then my mother, who gave me no choice

But to love you more deeply than I do my own voice

It is after you leave, I imagine with fear

That you might not have believed that I held you so dear

I may yet depart from some worlds you sewed

But let my adventures by no means explode

All that you gave and will give to me still

All that I got and take forward until

In that moment your pageant becomes only past

I hope through those windows above you behold

That I cherish completely all footprints we passed.

Once I feared after death of your watching me still

Of your living inside me and hearing my thoughts

Of the shame and despair you could then endure

Of the worry and anguish it might then inspire

But painstakingly, finally does the obvious out

In me already you dwell, my thoughts are yours too

Forever intertwined, your Gods and mine

For by walking not watching do our toes slowly bend

And far have we walked, together, toward our own ends

These footprints we leave judge not one at a time

But all at once, when a mere bit of carpet reveals

the ugly, the random, the perfect sublime.