Love Poem: Precocious Liturgies
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Written by: Gerald Dillenbeck

Precocious Liturgies

I'm going through my morning routine
still at least half asleep,
pondering what was I pondering?
while preparing morning meds
and showering my daughter,
helping her dress,
filling her snack pail
for her long school bus ride,
changing my son's overnight diaper,
lotioning ashy skin,
tying shoe laces,
hers, mine, ours,
feet walking onto the bus,
hooking all four corners of her safety harness
and walking back toward our house
thinking
I've been up for an hour
and now I'm ready to begin my day.

What was that first hour?
Its quality of dream
heading toward future investments
in life as more full consciousness.
Consciousness of a different dream?
A different sense of identity?
A different quality of life fullness
in contrast to dreamy half-consciousness,
on back to less than half,
and then the alarm clock
too quickly buzzing louder
to interrupt
whatever it was that had felt so ponderous
pondering what I had been pondering
before I drifted back into sleep.

Self awareness,
self and sometimes also other consciousness,
has this liquid flowing quality
of investment in life
and disinvestment through dreaming,
loss of self-embodied awareness.

I wonder if life could feel richer
if cash followed this same investment in conscious flow preference
over disinvesting in interest paid for over-dreaming
together in WinLose (0)Sum assuming societies,
Eden economies of Paradise Lost,
Bodhisattva Warriors
tying each other's shoes
as necessary co-investment
and physically possible
and ecologically optimal
to get to that part of our conscious warrior day
we can re-invest in deeper consciousness
loving together,
investing in our cooperatively-held healthy water,
and nurturing air for the grandkids
and the back yard chorus of birds
and their grandkids
to breathe,
and fire for cooking and heating, but not hating,
and retelling family and tribal recreation stories,
Earth's continuing liturgical investments
in self with other nutritional flowing consciousness.