You Must Become

My thoughts like a dark and storm-racked sea

Rush upon me and there is no rest,

Sleep comes in fitful pauses and I wake

Exhausted with a weight upon my chest.

Great gulps of breath to still the pounding heart

Return the body to some normalcy.

Last night while reading Milosz I was struck

By a certain similarity

Of life experience, his phrases burned

Onto the page with Truth's imprimatur.

All these years gone by, so little learned

Of riches that lie within us, we demur

To vagueness and content with 'getting by'

Make of our days a journey to no end.

"You must become what She has seen in you."

These words so gently spoken by a friend

Sum up the tale of this strange and haunting life,

Home of visitants and presences,

The spirit world disclosed however brief,

And the years of work unseen behind the veil.