Be the Light You Wish to See in the World

Be the light you wish to see in the world. Be the hope, the plenty, the compassionate, the caring and sharing, the unwavering and graceful, not-single-handed but herbful, truthful, trusted and trusting, and faithful, loving, embracing, here-to-answer-my-calling, the committed, free moving, safe, safer, safest, steady, human, being, the dust made of sparkles from universes you don’t know but touch with the tiniest of fibers.

You were born to do good. Born from goodness into goodness. Born to adore and be adored. Born to kiss magic with your toes and for your tongue to honey everyone's ears with a pristine mess born of earth’s cyclical convocations.

You aren’t as afraid as you think you are. Deep down in the caverns of your soul echo lost worlds that sing the oldest of songs. The song of all of us—caterpillars and inch worms, earwigs and rose buds, tobacco leaves and mullein flowers. The cicadas sing to the cycads; they know how long they’ve been here, do you?

You are more ready than you know to lick palm leaves and to chew up pine resins, and for your tongue and fingers, legs and toes, hair and nose to be swallowed up by the land and loved by the air in sea foam bubbles on shores made for all of us. You are more ready than you know to drink in the river you wash in and to remember why tomorrow will never be as sweet as today, even when you're living in yesterday.

You are more yourself every day, even as you doom scroll and learn about the latest billionaire plunder that lurches across the globe, showing us the ongoing destruction of caucacity. And as you grey and your opinions are more firmly entrenched; the neighbour's cows still wait for your lonely heart to sing to them. Nature bears witness to your song within a song.

You are everyone’s daughter and no one’s mother. The grace of the planet flows through you; she shows you how to be, how to peak out brightly from behind storm clouds, and how to wrestle with the wind just as a spider does in her late-night weaving.

You are meant to close gates only to your losses and to dance and plant in forgotten pastures.

There is nowhere to run to find better. The best is our bodies made of sand, fed on milk in alcoves where mothers chant protection into their children's flesh.

We have fed on poison for too long and rumble with hunger. Our recovery is hidden in each other’s quiet bellies.

You are mine. I am yours. There’s nowhere to go but back to each other to unbury the dead hearts we left behind to meet deadlines and get through long commutes. (Capitalism hates us).

Come to my little place, it is pristine but not perfect. Sometimes drought and fires consume us, sometimes, we are buried in snow and heartache. None are turned away.

Drink clean water and soup made from butternuts grown in my garden. Gather your thoughts while your heart picks wildflowers in the field made for bees. We will pollinate the valleys we sleep in and the gorges in our hearts.

I have not forgotten about light, how it gets in, how your darkness won’t last, and how somewhere in the stars, universes are being born. Maybe right here, between us...a planet is evolving from our dusty toes and a COVID runny nose, and fingertips imprinted with the stories of riverbeds.

You are not ready to give up but to move on, to move up, to move, just as the planet does, just as God does; so they say.

Our planets rotate together on this ellipsis that no one knows everything about,

If I don’t awaken in the morning, not because I forgot to say the Sh’ma daily for 50 years; carve my name on your fence. Hum a song you can’t get out of your head, and gather my remains. Throw them into the creek, or the sky, so I can whisper how you’re made of magic and thunder, and maybe you’ll listen.

By Rebecca Rogerson

©Rebecca Rogerson, 2025