Check in poem

[Chris Corrigan]

Harvested from the check in:

Uisce. Flow. Water.

a fifth

the new province that arises when dignity is present

the empty water of creation

the blankness of beginning.

What makes your heart beat faster?

What rushes the courage and heats the blood?

Excitement and fear

last going first here

the anxiety of a shallow chance

the thought of a simple dance

and the possibilities of a romance between

a heart and head and a gut that finds home

in a circle that puts me on the land.

Attend to the heart that comes alive in the poetry

of dangerous and noble things

beauty that sings in rearranged rings

being unsure, feeling the rise and fall of risk

feeling the belonging and the bloodrush of

an argument between beloved

or the vicarious experience of watching my sons

move their bodies on the pitch

feeling the itch to play, but staying away,

reaching them only with a pulse.

There is a dulcet tone to the stern declaration of clarity

a resonance with the parity of intention

an invitation that pulls at the rush.

Fear again. and guilt, the history that has built up in me

from years of inaction and inactivity, seeing the faces illuminated by fire

the blaze outside, a circle of ideas with traction that return to inaction

and a guilted edge.

Fear again.  And love.  But knowing I am not alone,

makes my heart beat faster, a rush to calm, a balm to relax.

Fear attacks my exposure, but my heart explodes at connections

and inspiration, inquiry and conversation, open and vulnerable.

Excitement occupies my court, shuttles my attention

through my child's imagination, a series of creations,

the flow of uisce the joy that.

Fear again.  adrenaline.  energy that becomes passion

that fashions my fear into excitement, turns flee to stay,

fall into the interaction with people that make me race.

A tap on the ground, a stick on the earth, 

the surprise of the birth of the unexpected world

creeping death robs my breath of length

and the collapse here seems set to change us this year.

This is a perfect time to chime, but I couldn't manage it all.

My heart races at sight of love and the lost chance to have given love

and at the discovery of a map that helps me find the world that 

has always been there.

The promise of books, the promise of possibility, 

and the hostile reality of the promise of death

the syncronicity of a blossoming next breath

and the empathy of vulnerability and a tube of red lipstick.

In my heart is a hill that is climbed when my heart finds the view 

of transformed life right in my midst or in the travel of new place.

The fear and terror of skiing at the edge of my ability

under a big beautiful Canadian sky, and of being that same guy

off the hill, doing a new thing, diving into the cold of some kind of vulnerable

nakedness know that it could be brilliant in the end

and calls you to get in it again.

Life is about learning how to play and dance in the rain.

It is about the way things change ,the chance of pain transformed

to confidence and joy.

Fearlessness has me forgetting the edges of excitement and fear

the joyfulness of free play, the best and worst of people

drawn away from unconscious living

and into the giving of passion to each other

away from a compliant calm.

to a knowledge of power 

and not to cower from the responsibility

of speaking clearly to the centre

and letting it mentor my heart into a full 

embrace of my kids and the pride that hides there.

Love catches me by the chin and draws me in to presence,

to my connections to kin, the lessons of children

the moments in which I am fully awake.

My heart races when I know I belong to this nature 

when I see eyes light up and know I am never alone

engaged in the long hope of

being right here.