Photos by Brackett Studios: {Passing By} Series

In a breath, we are swept off our feet:

Eternity pulls back her fine curtain, winking,

And the unutterable clutches at our chest,

Swirling and spinning our insides up

Like frothed passion foaming,

Swift and intoxicating.

We are caught staring point blank

Into the Eyes Who See All,

And awakening to that holy gaze,

Our exposure splits us wide open —

Head to toe,

Spirit to soul to mind to dust;

All rushes to the surface

To receive that engulfing Kiss of Life —

No part left behind.

And I want to drown in It —

And submerged, to give up the struggle —

Stop the flailing and panicked fear,

And find:

I was born to breathe under this tidal flow.

Homebound, winding upon those country roads

Held within ripe cornfields growing lush and tall,

Clouds layered and danced within

Piles and piles and piles of storm-clouds

Like some mystical parfait

Stacked as wide and high and deep as Heaven —

The kind of treat you’d climb up in

To eat from inside out,

And to top it off,

Those setting sunbeams kept pushing through,

Painting a stunning, living, shifting canvas:

A complete gift of unexpected awe.

And my heart took flight —

Involuntary, urgent, primal —

Right out of this frame of molecules

Miraculously bouncing in tight contraction,

And despite the Law of Gravity,

With that great Sky I melded —

My body quivering,

My mouth overflowing with laughter,

My eyes begging to remember

Every delicious split second,

My spirit flung wide-open,

Engulfed in Mystery, drowning in bliss —

For in the midst of the Unknown,

Glory broke forth,

A radiant freedom enfolding,

An encounter with Love’s liberating embrace,

As deep cried out unto deep —

Oh! The longing in these weighted, throbbing bones!

Oh! The ecstasy within Your manifest Presence!

Here I am —

Tethered to this dying Earth —

Yet forever One with The Sublime.

— Life’s Alluring Invitation —

Poem by Rebekah Brackett