Soul Business

It's not a question of you and I now
It's what's really between us -
I said it's like being in another room
Or the same room, with all the lights turned out
Or underwater, holding your breath
As you float in front of me with your eyes closed

It's soul business now, and not what we have known
Or can claim from each other, or demand
That's over now, and the business I have with you
Is no business maybe, either -

And what did I say? We are like wrong-footed dancers
As soon as I think it's this way, it reverses
By way of saying look, you don't know what it is
So would you mind just tripping over this puddle…
And I get up with my face muddied, humbled, laughing -

And look, don't give me neat words on paper
Speak it in the moment, breath it, give it away
This stuff is for sharing out loud as it comes
As the best we can say - cracking it,
Silencing the crackling down the line…

Until we are on stream with cliff-path and sky
And each other, in the rain, or whatever the weather
We are one another, and it's the one plunge
That finds us together, here, all as friends

And lovers, where the wedding we are waiting for is all of us.

~

XXIV

I saw a great light come down over London,
And buildings and cars and people were still
They were held wherever they were under the sky's
Clear humming radiance as it descended -
Everywhere, in shops, behind desks and on trains
Everything stopped as the stillness came down
And touched the crown of our heads
As our eyes closed, and the sky filled us
And our minds became the sky -
And everyone, regardless of crime class or creed
Was touched; as slowly we began to stir
Out of this penetrated light-filled sleep
Dizzily as the hand completed its dialling,
And the train lurched forward
And I saw faces looking at one another questioning,
I saw people meeting eye to eye and standing
Half amazed by each other's presence
I saw their mouths silently shaping the word why
Why didn't we know this? and yet knowing
They already knew, and without words
We all stood searching for the gesture
That would say it -

As the lights went green, and we drove on.

~

Quatrain

'To really be breathed through
By the rightness of each moment-
That would be living in the light…'
'That would be living', you replied.

~