Medio Metta
a poem.
by Davis Cowles
May you be happy.
May you be free from suffering, at least for a moment.
May the doors of your beloved Sunday cafe open like Gramma’s arms to reveal the banal, cup-clinking joy of your neighbors. May there be friends, acquaintances and a few strangers there milling about. There’s no line. The barista greets you like a friend, because you are friends, and mostly knows what you want, but lets you order as if she doesn’t.
Hmmm, favorite booth? Or porch today?
Porch. Juniper reaches through the fence, further freshening your tiny universe with a thousand year old scent like, well…Juniper. An ebullient little girl chalks her wildest dreams into reality on the dew-wet walkway. “Woooow, is that a unicorn?!” you inquire. She looks beside your face, then skyward, cackles heartily and returns to her work.
May you be happy.
Yes, may you be happy.
May you find love. Warm, deep orange, bursting-at-the-seams, just right, change your life, soul-molting LOVE. May you awake in disbelief at just how wonderful this little life can be. May you, in moments of unthinkable despair, know the unconditional affection of a good dog.
May you, on a gray Tuesday afternoon in early Fall, wonder why the fuck you even try. Rudderless and unfeeling you float in some corporeal doldrum, wanting to want something. Anything.
Lying on the floor, may you puzzle over the sudden disappearance of last week’s motivation. The lack lingers. Looms. It’s heavy. Heartless. Slowly, unrelentingly pushing the air out of your lungs. The gentle pace of it is brutal. Days pass this way. Perhaps this is just how it is. On and on and on and on and dry sulfur and brittle leaves and on and on and stale breathy whisper weakly, hopelessly calling out without sound and the phone rings.
You stare blankly. Thumb hovers over red, finds green. An old friend still wants to know you. Somehow. You’re incredulous, but what do you have to lose? You don’t tell him everything, but enough to go on a walk afterwards. Ever so slightly, gravity shifts.
Two days later, a grin from a potential mate in an elevator that may or may not have even been intended for you but there was only one other person in there and it couldn’t have been for them so Let’s Ride. Crack in the evil fortress wall. Well-timed river dip and backyard barbecue and painting again for the first time in years and slowly, sheepishly, your muse has returned carrying her teeth in the palm of her hands. Gummy smile. Body moves.
Something once known and loved comes back to say “hey stranger,” and one morning on an aimless bike ride you are suddenly, but not altogether surprisingly, ILLUMINATED. It turns the head of the woman you know for her uncanny likeness to her dog, and you know. She grins, and you know.
May it be so. May you forever go and come back again. May you be happy. May you smile and laugh and cry and feel sadness and throw up your hands and fall to your knees and grieve and hold yourself tight and meet angels you’ve always known when you need them most, and finally, rest.
May you make your art. May you have it all.
May you be happy.