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Alignment

“I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart...”
– rainer maria rilke

We want things to be easy-
easy as editing lines by pressing
a plastic key – there, alignment.

Life revels in its struggle -
difficult as kin off kilter with growing
pains and broken hearths – here, discord.

If we could tweak problems by lifting letters,
set dilemma precisely in the good next place-
simple would be the road to heart’s desire.

Maybe patience is the only medicine and
when we survive the swirling murmuration
of longings as they tumble like starlings

on a soggy afternoon, we find that spirals
align best with open space and there is
no plastic key to lift tendrils of pea vines

sunward nor to steer disappointing news away.
There is no easy in the orchid’s bloom, and
even plastic uses millenniums to arrive.

--rm mist 2012

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