The Veil

It's as if behind the veil
of it all awaits a hungry
blackness,
biding time for a tear, 
a pierce, to open up
on the stretched-too-thin canvas of this life.
So it can pour its inky, 
grasping presence into time. And yet,

Cohen says, and I agree, 
'Cracks let in the light',
but perhaps the shards 
from a shattering, like this,
scatter the light into seeming leering 
faces, cold and barren,
sterile and sunken. And yet,

I ask for light.

--

"Now," say the leering faces,
"(S)he simply is Not, and neither will you Be."
Perhaps this is true, perhaps this is not
the point, which is that each of us carries
a birthright permission to live, to care, to grow
old and eventually let go.
Even the ripest seed is incomplete 
without water and light.