By Avallina Balestri (alias Rosaria Marie)

Word Count: 371

Rating: G (suitable for audiences)

Summary: A poet hopes to be a small voice for beauty and Truth.

Let my life be spent out

Like the smallest of birds,

Winging its way from forest freedom

To the flame-speckled hut

To the wild air again.

She comes to sing her song

As she was ever meant to do

And death is consummation

Of her call.

She knows peace.

Is she not the essence of the universe?

Let me spend life weaving

A spiral of sanctuary songs,

Insignificant in scope,

Yet fundamental in nature.

Let me make my mark

As the arrow of love flies

From the harp string plucked,

Let me play the heart’s notes

In the silence.

Does not the quiet speak the richest language?

Let me shield a flame

In the darkness,

A lantern held aloft

To the slice of the wind

That will not surrender

Nor be dimmed

No matter how small it seems

In the dark night,

In the dark woods,

When the straightway seems lost.

Are all who wonder truly lost?

Cleaved by the unknowing

And burned by the knowing,

Should I fear the final sacrifice,

The final shedding of this outer self

Which we would daily strip

To make love to the fire in the head,

To kiss the lips of the soul?

Are we not all called to the same consummation?

Are the stories of the soul so bloodied

They cannot live again?

Or are they a circle

Ever weaving around

And rising rooted?

For we are born of starlight

And breath upon the dust,

And we fall and rise

Lesser to Greater,

All Powerful, to All Vulnerable.

Is the suffering not the molding of the clay?

We are given the task of planting

And our seeds must split open

And bleed out their essence

Before they are reborn,

A rainbow being

Submerged in the coursing

Of new blood, new life

Of energy, of light

Of the Great Song

Of the Wild Hunt

Of all that is and all that is not

Of the Ecstasy of the saints.

Can any words convey the Song of Songs?

Then let my life be as my death,

Spent out in search of the Song,

And let me meet the raven’s flight

Through the blood of the Lamb.