Poetry

This poem was written for the Neighbourhood Connect Relaunch Event held in Shikaoi Park, Stony Plain, Alberta, on May 10, 2022.

Tangled

We are all tangled, inextricably
woven together, bound
in likeness by our mortality, sharing
the common fact of sun and moon.

We live a single life, but breathe the lives
of every past and future: the breeze 
that tickles a hair against my cheek 
will someday stir a violent ocean storm.

We carry those waves within us,
and we carry the calm. A smile,
in the tumult of our existence, can intercept
the strike that would otherwise scorch

a last frayed nerve.
That simple gesture grounds us, here
on this rock we all call home, circling
the sun as the moon encircles us. We, too

are celestial bodies, subject to the momentum
of elliptical pathways, finite trajectories
linking orbits in a tangled chain – a mess
of intersections, the beautiful mess of being.

~Lisa Mulrooney