How to be happy for the unfolding
that has been, that has,
until this moment, seemed meaningful
and inevitable?

Nine years ago, you chose experience
over love, and boy did you get it.

A swashbuckling education in emotional travel;
around the world in eighty greys–

vulnerability, discovery, loss,
mortality, shame, error.

Yet it’s a decision you continue
to make like a contract, annually
renewing over and over this strange,
lonely sort of freedom.

~ Julia Daye

Perhaps love comes when our hearts
sit down, when our body’s vehicle,
after speeding the course,
puts itself in park
to watch the trees.

And in the slowing of our
fearful feet, we feel it move within us—
that inner body that was always there,
dancing from ear to ear.

~ Julia Daye

In the spinal column of the northern hemisphere,
I am stationed for this unfolding.

One foot on the ground, one with the fairies,
I return my confusion to the devil.

One wishbone, one backbone,
I hear my heart flutter beneath their wings.

~~ Julia Daye

All who I love have taught me to love
by listening deeply to myself;

this was a new thing for me for a while…

and in that listening,
I heard my spirit rage inside the hours

upon hours of furious overcompensation

and constant recuperation
from our city hive,

hours that outnumbered the

hours we spent
in creative work and love.

A calling to leave,

a calling to arrive; there are few
corners of the universe

where my earthly body

can explore,
and today, I am summoned

to one.

~~ Julia Daye