Monday, November 26, 2012

The changeling


There are places that I return to and
each time
things have shifted
I walk paths familiar and run my hands along signposts
the places where I once hung my knowing
but
always
the light slants different and the recollecting softens
and I feel at once full and missing

It's been said that the act of remembering
changes things
changes the memory even
rewrites the code
and so
it becomes something altered
something different
than before

So I balk
because when I walk through the frames
I want them just the way they were caught
rough and unawares
true and alive
honest and proper
always
the
same

I want to wear the garments
of old
because some of them wrap round
just so
and I know and am known
just in the very wearing of them

But memory
it is a changeling
And when I slip into its fabric
there is a pinching
sometimes

That shifting that happens
however
it is also a kind of grace
really
For perhaps in the remembering
we can know our lives anew
We can know that
in all our joys and sorrows and wrong paths taken
and in all that has been or ever will be
we are being made
new


6 comments:

  1. There is something so deeply personal about this yet everyman (everyone) can hear your heart and know this place. This going back and revisiting the places that shape and mark us. Mold us. Beauty here my friend. And I love this part "in all our joys and sorrows wrong paths taken.... we are being made new." AMEN>

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  2. This took my breath away. Really beautiful.

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  3. Ah yes, the memories that shift in the very act of remembering. But that's who we are, isn't it? In the re-telling, we find meaning that we missed in the living. Thanks for this glorious reflection on these truths, friend. I so love it here.

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  4. indeed, we see differently in the rearview mirror, don't we? love these quiet whispers from your heart, Holly. i always leave this place altered.

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  5. Thank you, Kelli, for continuing to return to this space. I love having your voice here. And yes, the backwards view is not the same. But I think that is okay.

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  6. I am so thankful for your presence here, Diana. And, yes, the "re-telling"....I love that--we can speak again our story and we can be made new. I love having you here.

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