Your heart is the morning
a beautiful mist
dappled in sunlight
each touch is a kiss

Your thought in the weather
of tremulous heart
is song like a child’s
I’m taken apart

Ah land ever lovely
I sing at your thought
in your lull I will listen
breathe never for naught

Old as the sound of the wind
new as its touch unseen
Soft as the world’s own whisper
ever-spoken
suddenly heard

Fair as mist-bright weather
dark as mystery’s heart
So the song of the one I call my land
of voice so small come
sea-deep words

A frustrated hourglass, stiff and fragile:
the sand slips through grain by grain.
They slip through smoothly, time still passes:
its curved body cannot contain.

The glass bends inward to grasp each grain
as sand dances through its open hand.
Each crystal falls like precious rain
the sand so fine flows on like time.

A lonely hourglass has lost its last:
an empty peace so calm and still.
The desperate pain left nothingness,
but the glass is turned and so the sand will spill.

I am here…

holding your heart with each thought
breathing your presence as written words take form
sighing of each inward breath

until of my labor at last I birth

song enough to say my secret
verse enough to voice this truth
poem enough to remember these moments

that should I be drawn away
I should find my away again
find again my love and know her

Sacred stories are narratives from which peoples, cultures, and individuals derive hope, a sense of continuity, and of belonging. They tell our sacred truths with a power like myth: the truths we believe about ourselves, the ones that feel like freedom and lightness of heart. They are also the ones we miss when we have lost touch with them.

But sacred stories are not just about communities. We each have our own. For instance, consider this quote from Professor of Psychology, Dan P. McAdams:

A personal myth delineates an identity,
illuminating the values of an individual life. …

Alive, like flame undying flickers;
Bright of heat like friction, hope?

Yearning, yearning,
tendon, bone
from thirsty soul
that birthing wind
in labor must hold still.

Starving, starving,
let die what will
to strip what won’t
til finding naught
at last one must let go.

The grasses swayed of her sweet whispers,
singing silent songs in dance,
bathed in aromatic breath,
til soaked in scents of sun and soil:

She stood, she met them
soul caressed,
immersed with them in sighs of light and color.

The boughs, bending in wooing winds,
slowly swinging cradling limbs,
breathing, in a breezy bath,
were waving leaves in windy waters:

She leaned, she let her
body rest
in rhythmic arms as restful as a mother’s.

The sensuous world so spoke in oceans,
flying seas and colory floods,
bore up her own in tide and tow,
drew hearts away, a-sway in surge and lull:

She slept, she gave her
heart’s consent
to she whose charms were soothing as a lover’s.

Beautiful love
My lovely joy
Ah joyous heart here with me

I sing
I sigh
these simple words
are all I have to give

Oh gentle soul
My soulful song
With songful eyes you meet me

I sway
I swoon
and breathe your winds
my light, you make me live

Do come my heart
Whose heart I love
Whose lovely eyes so take me

My one, my all
whose own I am
your sweet voice comes to me

My land, my love
who whispers of the sea