Discern, he said

Don’t judge

With the measure you use

It will be given back to you

Tenfold, running over

Out of your arms and back to into them

You are doves delivering news of dry land

You are serpents making a path through sand

You are Shamayim, everything contained

Chaos within limits within oceans within coasts

Love yourself as others do.

Love others more

Everything is perfect in moderation,

Including excess

Everything has time, a speed,

A point, departure, entry, regress

A place. A space

Even reason has its own season

Let me ingest my own advice first

See if it is worth dispensing.

Carpentry

Strip me bare and polish me

Smooth-grained

Stained

Warm wood under your fingers

Twisted from a wild living thing

Fate selected

To fall and be carried in sections,

Mauled by screaming saw-blade

Laid out in the heat to cure

In quiet darkness, kept forever

Ministered by you in silence

Warm daylight of your shed

Shavings curl to the wood-dust floor,

Soundless

Your hands deft on the plane

Eyes soft, lips parted

Working me

Seeing my curves before they appear

From the edge of possibilities

Satisfied before you began

To let me take shape according to

My knots and your fluid design

Each adjusting in turn,

Bonded by the interplay

Movement, stillness

Liminal

Use your edges

Don’t shave them off,

Slice by slice

To please your neighbour

Don’t erode your boundaries

For the sake of saving face

For a false promise of peace

Keep wilderness at your edges

Sanctuary at your core

Value your margins

Life is greatest at the interface

A bifacial blade cuts two ways at once

Value your margins,

The marginal ones

Use them,

Don’t abuse them