In the Arms of the Moon

I don’t have much to offer that would bring you use or pleasure. I have no money, no worldly treasure that you might keep as some family heirloom. I’ve been remiss at honoring relationships I value. Please don’t believe you’re not in my heart. The road I travel has been rocky, distant, and deeply solitary, but it was not a road away from you. I'm not sure that it was a choice. I've walked most of my life to find a way back home.

Still I have a pile of words I’ve been collecting to give to you one day. They’re moments, hopes, and conversations I’ve had with you on my own, in my thinking of you. You've been with me more than you know and so I'd like to share them with you. I hope you don't mind. Please don't mind.

I’ve always had a wish for a life time of love and laughter that sits right on your doorstep, a happily ever after that follows you like colorful shadow. Though I know the road less traveled a little more than most folks do, I hope that you find your travels take you where someone, at least one, always loves you. Even when the days bring sadness, when grief tears and pulls your heart, may your soul keep filled with stuff that stars are made of. May your feet always know the ground you stand on.

When you see the sun rise, I hope that you always take for granted that someone put it there for you. And each night when you close your eyes sleep safe in the arms of the moon, wrapped in a blanket of red with God and the angels watching over you.

I love you. I always will.

−me strauss Letting me be

25 Words: Strong Enough

As sure as the sun sets, we want to hold on to what we love.

The trick is to hold strong enough to be gentle.

−me strauss Letting me be

If You Love . . .

If you love, you know you’re going to feel the hurt,
See the flowers grow from the muddy earth. Howard Jones.

“Hug me like you mean it,” she said, and my eyes said that I could not. The hurt was too large, too fresh. The confusion had bruised my heart. My arms wouldn’t do what they should. She knew it. I knew it. Once we could. Once we were close. Now we stood totally separate.

The word friend hung like a smoky mist, taunting the two of us. Our faces showed we knew more. Words weren’t going to do it. Neither she nor I wanted it to end that way − then or now. Neither she nor I could change the mistakes we made that piled in small silences on each other until our laughter, our memories were in jeopardy if we tried to hold what was once still.

Only love can cause a problem so large, so deeply felt. Only love unconditional can forgive the hurt, so the healing can start. Only love made my arms loose up for that hug while my heart wished for a different end to the story. But that hug made my heart bigger, softer,, and stronger for the love of it. I hugged to let her know how I valued what we had both lost.

If you love, you know that the flowers need dirt, and that sad things can make a large heart larger and able to love even more.

−me strauss Letting me be

Where the Blood Flows

Who knows what it’s like to be on the inside, deep, deep inside where the blood flows. where thoughts and feelings mix with the music and color, where the universe lives both inside and out. Are their few or many? Are there any who know how to live inside that far?

Things where the stars and cells are one work differently.

Do they know that pain doesn’t hurt there? Do they know that moonlight blue is safe as being in a mother’s womb?

No one seems to know that all things come from that deep, deep place where the cells grow. No one comprehends that the love starts with those simple cell dividing, those cells we saw in Science class, those cells that live inside our being.

If everyone understood that . . . would they see that’s what makes love so strong, so pliable, so reliably unconditional?

Is it true? No one knows me. No one sees me. Is it so that they can’t see so far inside me? Maybe some see more than I do.

I know that I don’t know me.

Yet I know the place I speak of. I live, dream, I dance, I love there.

−me strauss Letting me be