Songs

Once I bowed my head with all the rest

Breathed in the scent of incense by the candles’ flickering flame

Fearing death almost as much as I feared life.

Now I raise my face to the rising and the setting sun

And wonder at the silver light of the moon

And how it soothes the ugliness out of every scar.

Instead of tuneless soulless words

Chanted beneath a sky purged of mystery and the deep unknown

I let my soul soar on the wings of the blackbird’s song

Into the morning where every hue of feather and petal and leaf is born.

And when it is time for night to fall

I will fade into the soft darkness between the stars

With the song of the blackbird rippling in my ears.