To Trust Old - The Laughing Heart

Click To Trust to listen:

While I wrote and narrate the piece, my son, Lev, just created the music for it. I see the challenge to trust is what underlies much of the human dilemma. Without trust, well…..more on that in my blog. Deeper layers revealed on multiple hearings.

Here’s the poem in case you’d like to read along with the audio version.

TO TRUST by Errol Strider

Oh, God,

I would step out into you,

                   across the threshold of my precious reluctance,
                   over the chasm of the charming sedate,
                   through the infernal knot of my unknowingness…

I would…I would…oh, I would…if…

And you, my brother,

          I would feel myself across to you,
                   insinuate myself through the cracks in my masks,
                   trickle out of my safe self images.

I would…I would…if…I could…if…

And you, my sister,
          How I long to see you there as yourself
                   beyond my mother pointing to me
                   beyond my sisters shaping me
                   just to see you there in your own self,
                             beyond the ghosts you remind me of.

I would…I would…but…

                   If I step out into the space you seem to occupy,
                   how will I be sure you’ll be there when I arrive,
                   and that I won’t find my minuscule claustrophobic self staring back at me?

Oh, God, I want to trust you.

          I want to throw out my being,
                   jump off the cliff of inadequacy,
                   do a double twisted somersault
                   into your oceanic arms.

I would, yes, I would,

                   But what if I just splatter
                   and am crushed by the rocks of fantasy
                   barricading my soul from saturation?

Oh, to trust! To Trust…trust…

          To extend my nakedness to your waiting infusion,
                   but your hand is too large, God,
                   I’m afraid I’ll get lost in the wrinkles.

And my brother,

I would…I would…step over to you,

but for the impenetrable fear that stabs between us
and the acidic memory of how we were to each other
when we first embraced through the corrosion.

I would, oh, I would, oh, my sister!

          I want to trust…trust you,
                   if we could see each other without anger’s lisp
                   without the fleshy pressures leaving us vacant…

Oh, to trust…to trust…all of you…

          To surrender to your copious wholeness
                   begging me to leave behind myself as silhouette
                   drawing me in to your featured entrails.

I would, oh, I would…
But I fear losing myself in you.
I fear that once inside you, I would be lost to me,
squelched by your exorbitant being
digested and turned into droppings of myself.

So, how, oh, God,

          how, oh, brother/sister
                   can I take the first step out of myself
                   unless I see you open-die to me
          unless I see you trust your essence to my trembling humanity,
                   until you die first for me
                   and come out right side up on the other side of…
……………. annihilation…?

Oh, would…would…
Oh, God,

would you?