And when you finally arrive – and only the smashed and broken do – there is no hope to welcome you at the door
No baubles, no balloons or ‘You’re jolly good fellow!’ loudly sung
It’s bloody awful and you need to get out
This is the worst. How did it happen?
Though as confusion settles – it takes a while, breathed through and away – here is space you hadn’t known was there
The void offers this, no busy buildings obscuring the view, no empires making their oh-so-necessary claims
Here, behind the creaking scenery of existence
Only stillness, with our surfing left behind –
The white-knuckle thrill of temporary meaning
The surge and lift of rolling attachments
Our trusty surf board’s cracked, knackered, we’re going nowhere
And in silence, like a whispered secret, like a slow dawn, beauty appears; and joy glimpsed, like a darting deer
And this void, we will say with hindsight, a most unlikely womb
Before some thing, no thing
Emptiness – with love’s fingerprints all over it
