January with Jane – 15. Perspective Without Which any Point in Which It Might Vanish

The way the green or blue or yellow in a painting

is simply green and yellow and blue,

and tree is, boat is, sky is

in them also—-

There are worlds

in which nothing is adjective, everything noun.

This among them.

Even today —- this falling day—-

it might be so.

Footstep, footstep, footstep intimate on it.

On first read of this one, I was drawn to the feeling of living without qualifying (or disqualifying?) label, an acceptance of things as they are, of life as it is. The simple isness of things, if you will. No good or bad. No beautiful or atrocious. But that objective glance, as if from a far distance or from deep within the witnessing mind, soon chills and empties the heart. (‘It is what it is’ so often spoken with an air of resignation, acceptance misunderstood)

Unless, of course, tree is Loved, boat, sky beloved, as they are. Pain forgiven. Sorrow embraced. Chaos allowed. Flaw hallowed. Fabric.

Is to allow a thing to exist, as it is, the same as Love? Allowing feels soft. Softening permits Love to take root in that soil. Footsteps fall soft upon that tender, sacred ground. Does adding the H of the Holy gaze transform the glance that Allows to something more akin to Love? Hallowed.

The poet’s perspective, paradoxically, brings one closer, fuller… to the point in which nothing is erased, nothing so far removed from grace, nothing closer to it either (because upon looking closer, perfection is an illusion, after all, AND because even if perfection did exist, then all things are such, AND because perfection does not in any way make a thing more Loveable, more worthy of compassion, more beautiful, if you will)

Bring it all close in. Make space for it all on the canvas of life.

Soon you will be needing a larger canvas for your heart.