The Soul's voice

Sometimes the soul DIRECTLY challenges the structure of our personal life.

Below is a poem included in Rodger Housden's book Ten Poems to Set You Free.

THE LAYERS

I have walked through many lives
some of them my own,
And I am not who I was
though some principle of being abides,
from which I struggle not to stray

When I look behind
as I am compelled to look
Before I can gather
strength to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned campsites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections
and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the the way
bitterly stings my face
yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go
and every stone on the road
precious to me

In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers
not in the Litter"

Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.