Openness

We are like sand

Waiting for the next imprint

Always impressionable

Touched by every encounter.

We feel the silence

Of the bare aspen tree

We taste the sunlight

Rippling on the pond

We sense the yielding earth

Under every footstep

So why is it then we close

And harden into numbness

When to be like a sponge

Or an empty canvas

Or the nameless surface

Of the still water

Is to be open to grace

To be touched

And lifted from this moment

Into a world like no other

I suppose it means

We also bear our hearts

To the bruises and scars

We all carry within us

To feel the untold grief

Of so many, and open ourselves

To the inevitable losses

Feeling exposed and vulnerable

But if I had a choice

Which I always do

I'd rather be open, even

If it means being a pin cushion

Exposed to the piercing of life

For numbness is a quiet death

Where nothing touches us -

Locked inside our own prison

not knowing we hold the keys.

Mark Coleman

Author of 'Awake in the Wild'

The image is of the Tree Monster in a street near my home. A vine has climbed up a stobie pole and out onto the power lines and it resembles a monster with arms flailing, especially when it sways maliciously in the wind.

Once a year it blossoms into flowers.