Unharbored

May 2006

UNHARBORED

By Scott Murphy & Jeff Ludlum

One of life's most fundamental truths, always two sides to the same coin,
A coin tossed into thin air with hope, anticipation, and expectation.
Secretly we know that even it comes up what we've called, that may not end up as we'd hope.
We fool ourselves in what we know and what we can control- a coin, a clock, a life immaculate
In a moment's time we can rise and fall, from wise sage to village idiot,
But we accept that in either state we are loved just the same.

Somehow that can make all the difference, that simple, vast, wondrous, baffling, mysterious thing we call "love".
Hence the paradox enters, like a slice of light through a baffled window shade
For there is no other place as fertile, welcoming, nurturing, than the safe harbor paradox finds in love,
A mooring that fastens the sorrow to the joy, the cut to the cure.

It's BECAUSE I love you that I have to hurt you so deeply, repeatedly. Can't you see that?
Not only see it- taste it, feel it, hate it and need it.

It is for the very REASON that we don't want to be a warring society that we must have better, bigger weapons of mass murder, more than any one else.
And follow the guns and tanks with money and bandages- "I'm sorry," we say. So sorry.
We meant well. We wanted to do right. We wanted to make the world a safer place. We THOUGHT we were acting according to the best decisions, best judgment. Yea.

But our motives are contrived and controlled by our own dueling souls in the hands of heaven and hell, both
No wonder it's the devil on one shoulder, the angel on the other, both whispering truths and wisdom, whispering vapored poison, both meaning well, wanting to do right.

It is from this safe harbor, we must venture to sea- the treacherous, bountiful sea- with angels and devils our conscience crew.
The good captain pushing the doubt and questions and uncertainty from his mind, that his hand may be steady on the ship's wheel.
Stern he is, trusting self, centered twixt the fiery flames and cool breeze of his winged guide
For he knows that his inner compass will not fail him when night has fallen and the moon is new.

He IS the sea, the salt, the moon and the faded stars. He IS the voyage!
This he knows, save when the doubt seeps into his mind, through the crevasses he's spent a lifetime sealing.
Then sealed they be- a self contained cargo that is his very savior come the heaviest of seas.
And yet cargo that can rot and fester and contaminate and confuse, causing the very vessel in which it rides to crash upon unseen jagged rock.
And thus upon this rock set a new course. One that begins with survival- a swim to shore, a quest for food, a seeking of shelter, and a hope for love.
A course unimagined a moment earlier, then becomes our sole focus. Clarity to see and trust in the basics: survival, hope, love.
Like a wide-eyed child whose very motions are nature herself: wind, sea, a surfaced innocence with unseen, wicked potential
We need only be a one-trick pony to live a good life: the trick of keeping the essence of the child alive within, even as our bodies age, our skin leathers, our ideas & memories become stained.
And cry at the top of our lungs- "I am alive!" So goddamn alive I can hardly stand it sometimes, but so willing to live it with wide-eyes and crevasses both.