Hospitality

Image Credit: http://goldpaintphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Full_Cold_Moon.jpg

 

Tonight,

I invite Sadness

to sit at my hearth

give her expensive wine

a cushion near the fire

a place to rest her feet.

 

I pray my welcome

will invite her to

move through

rather than stay,

but invite her in I must

for she rules this season

of cold full moons.

 

An attentive hostess

I serve her

stew from my cauldron,

bread from my table,

cake from my cupboard

meat from my heart.

 

I refill her glass, smile

knowing these gestures

risk permanent indwelling –

but hoping instead

for a gracious shift

back to whole shadow

or a bare sliver of light.

 

Even in full wane

I will still feel her,

this tearing pull

to emptiness

this flowing ebb,

this littoral zone,

for she dwells nearby.

 

Warmed by firelight

she nods,

smiles slightly

comfortable

in our arrangement.

I am not.

But even I

am capable of change.

 

2 thoughts on “Hospitality

  1. Alison Wilson

    This is such a beautiful expression of how to embrace life’s more difficult moments without resistance, whuch only serves to increase the pain. Thank you River for this luminous poem.

    Like

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