The Hand You Feel Within Yours

to welcome Darlene to the family

A barking lunatic who learned to howl
I mean to mark my moment of the moon
By meditation and my notation
Of what I might find without and within
The poetry of our situation
And share it in an avuncular growl
With chosen ones who have chosen to be
My relatives by human relation

As I like to be especially me
And now is the only time to begin
So now I encourage you to be too
Especially you as the rose is blown
Where something happens out of our control
We unfold petals we have never known
There where the lotus blooms inside the soul
Unfolding an ever-evolving we

No human being has to be alone
But for the great aloneness we all share
As sign and seal of our humanity
Worn round our necks as long as we are here
Along with philosophy faith and fear
Sharp shards of curiosity of where
We are and how as whom and even why
We are at all if we are born to die

We think about fortune drink about fate
We mean to do good and hope to do well
We try pretty much whatever we can
We scratch about heaven cringe about hell
And end up feeling like an also-ran
Like someone cheated at the starting gate
Where no one sees across the finish line
But the hand you feel within yours is mine:

No human being has to be alone

+Steven Curtis Lance



Copyright MMVIII