The Refining Fire

The Refining Fire

Caitlin's death has become the refining fire

Flames of heat and light that shape my heart

A wildfire that destroys what lay rotting on the forest floor

Making way for new growth

I surrender to the pain of feeling my flesh char

Leaving only truth bones

A skeletal framework for new agreements 

Where love grows limbs of compassion reaching 

Further from me and deeper within me

I welcome the smoke that

Billows and swirls about my head

Suffocating the thoughtless chatter

Inside and outside of me

I abandon the futile search for design

Willfully inhaling what smolders

To know what smell death has and

To know what smell death hasn't

Each exhale deepens my knowing

I draw breath to singe my vocal chords

Left to listen and gratefully mute

For if my voice were to bring words to the

Music of these roaring flames

No one would survive the song

I am glad for the refining fire

Preparing the way for new Knowing

That the big stuff matters most

And the little stuff matters as much

I am glad for this agent that germinates the seeds of

Loving more deeply and

Expressing that love more completely

I am comforted in the knowing that I fan those

Flames with a mother's love

Reaching wildly for my missing daughter

I revel that my tears like gasoline make the fire

Burn hotter

I offer no resistance

I would no more cease this burn, than cease

Loving Caitlin

And when this blaze fades to embers

Deepening silence and

Leaving ashes to be blown away to 

Our new life places and our new life spaces

It will have done the work of 

Sealing this mother and daughter's love for eternity

And where the word of existence is all that remains

From the rage of the refining fire

Be