This is the Shape of Belonging

Beneath the hum of wired skies,
we drift like shadows through the noise -
our voices frayed at the edges,
lost in the static of a thousand screens and dropped connections.

We have become strangers to our own tongues,
forgetting how the soul speaks
in the quiet between breaths,
how the ear must bend low
to hear the tremor in another's silence.

Eyes once fluent in the language of depth
now skim surfaces,
mirrors clouded
by the breath of hurry.

Yet the oak does not rush its roots
through the patient dark;
the river carves its truth
by staying close to the stone.

What if the way back begins
where pavement cracks?Where green tendrils rupture concrete,
the earth still dreams.

Let's find places where field meets forest,
and let dandelions and thistle
teach us the grace of resilience.

In our bending toward the fractured and the frail,
In our gentle cradling of the trembling wing,
In our search for ways to name the unspoken anguish,

we tend to the matter of our own scattered souls - the ash, pollen, and grit of our collective unspent grief

And unearth the shape of our own belonging—
a melody hummed by the world
when we finally learn to listen.