a kingdom built of seeds

Trying to find pieces of what I am in the dark, lonely, quiet, snowy nights of a silent season. Learning to be alone and to love it. Reaching for words in the disquiet of quiet. In search of myself while lost in myself. Like standing as the single being on a world my own. None before, none after. No one now. No one to come. Isn’t loneliness beautiful?

None to help carry us through the world. I travel light, of my own accord. I travel alone, not of my design. Separation can be what we most need, when we least want it. Forced to turn into ourselves when we have nowhere else to turn. What do you see, when you peer into your heart when there is no one else to give it to? When there is no other heart to keep you from your own?

We stand as lone mountains leaning into an endless sky. No weight but our own heaviness. Nothing above us but eternal possibility. But how can we leave the earth to which we are grounded? We can only learn to love our place. To be something solid on which other beings may reach a summit and rest. No concern of what splits and cracks and moves and falls and shrinks and ebbs away until it is no more. Worn by rain and snow and wind and rivers and quakes—by life and trials and pain and suffering and loss. Shaped by our lot and reshaped by the joy of being where we are and the passing breath of every moment.

Our place. Knowing only that we somehow add to the landscape of all things. Whether surrounded or alone.

(“It is not good for man to be alone.” But God, we are.)

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If you look you will not find yourself. You are too great to know the space you claim. Where you stand is a place no longer empty. Where you stand is somewhere now full, a gift of light and love that was not there before. It will not come to an end. And the world—once imprinted with your image—it will never be the same.