Shaking the Globe

For me, the last few months have been like falling unexpectedly in love.



I knelt with a dear one,


caught sun flare over a barley field,
felt rounded cobblestones under my converse soles
that have been there 'since God was a lad'
as my MIL would say;

caught up on friendships that have stood still
- paused -
for over a decade, and some nearly double that.


I lurched forwards into feeling again after a long time of

sitting
perfectly
still
in
case
i
fell.



But one sunny evening as I walked alone down a street in Chelsea
I knew something was about to unfold.
I stood outside a flower-shop,
bending to breathe the air above an ironstone jug
of sweet-peas and suddenly,
a snow-globe was shaking inside me,
filled with the peculiar and fascinating glitter
that dreams make when they stir.


There is a bizarre intersection
of faith and reality
that I am really mesmerized by this week.



It is the unexplained, traumatic and less than golden moments
that are being unwrapped in lives all around me


despite of and in the midst of
inspiration that abounds -
the contrast catches my breath away
as I contemplate the mis-match of gloom and joy.

I shake my dream-globe carefully,
lest I am tempted to fall out of love with life again.

'Keep feeling', I say to me.
'Be a witness to pain
but let not dreams be quenched by it.'

For unless you shake a snow globe
you will see no sparkle.

If your world is being shaken this week,
I pray you see the light lurking
behind the shadows.

Soon.