Sunday, June 20, 2010

belonging (revisited)

i was sitting in the coffee shop with my dad
drinking a cup of coffee,
waiting to pick up my children...
and i realized how good it is to belong to people.
my dad, he has given his best years, all of them,
to my mom and me and my sisters and brothers -
to care for us because we belonged to him.
there is a bond between us - a fidelity - a union of lives;
part of my soul is inside of him,
and part of his soul lives inside of me.
i can't explain it, but that's how it is...
we belong to one another.
it is the same with my dear one.
we've been sharing love and joy and pain,
laughter and tears,
children and grandchildren now
for almost 30 years.
part of each of us lives inside the other.
i'd like to explain this to my children
but i'm not sure they would understand it.
it might sound more like restriction
than realizing that part of one's true self
belongs to another.
but maybe when i'm 80
and we're sitting in a coffee shop or somewhere else
they will see what i see now...
how good it is to belong.
maybe they'll see it sooner than i did.
-dan wills (b.1958)

6 comments:

Kel said...

this mandala reminds me of the core rings of a tree trunk, and then fringing the edges looks like a forest of trees huddled in a circle of belonging

i hope you don't mind me playing "i spy" with your mandalas :)

Stacy Wills said...

i don't mind at all - that's part of the fun! i love to hear what others see and feel when they look at them. and as it turns out the source image for this mandala was my cedar tree. :-)

Kel said...

oh we love cedar
love the smell of it as a timber
love the symbolism of it for building our house with
what kind of cedar tree do you have?

Ragman said...

I love you!
ylh

Stacy Wills said...

kel, it's a red cedar. i call her grandmother cedar, and she is home to a colony of bees, squirrels and assorted birds.

ragman - i love you, too! :-)

Kel said...

squirrels!
oh man - they sound like fun
i fed some in a park in London
and saw some from a distance in USA
I think I could love squirrels almost as much as kangaroos :)