There is a delight intrinsic but hard wrought,
pressed from the berries of the briar—
prolific at these heights but frequently ignored,
gathered at no cost save all that the world
has taught us to desire.
There is a delight that will never turn
away from the blood in the streets,
the endless day of our racial night,
dark with the degradation of the daily
news and the violent squandering
of the human heart.
There is a delight dumbfounded
at the vista of its own ascent
and the seeming impossibility
that another can find his way here;
the awe that our footsteps
turned this way at all, and the dismay
that for those who come after
the trailheads could not possibly
stay clear. Still there are new
hikers coming every year.
There is a delight that grows in its insistency
amid the falling towers of hope and fear,
the culling of the dragon’s knife,
released into the hands of timelessness
within the sweat and rubble of an
imperfect life. There is a delight
that is your lungs’ true air, distilled
from your last sigh, sweetened on your
own lips, lit on the wick of your profoundest
care; the delight that has secretly
carried us here.
I am wanting this delight for you.
I want you to find the string unrolled
on this journey by those who have
come before. I want you to find my
hand extending in the labyrinth;
the opening and the hedge door. I
want you to walk on me as on the ground
of your own confidence, to find
that vast and intimate terrain that opens
in the headlights of your own
compassion—
to know beyond doubt that what
you are is the way you have longed to find,
the way you have always walked,
the love you have wished to be. To hear
me whistling far down this highway
of transparency, where my delight
is just to serve as road crew
on the freeway of your ecstasy,
smoothing out all distance and all
time; that right here where all life begins
and ends we may yet watch the same
setting sun, the same rising moon.