This Human Experience | lindaevediamond

"You are not a human being having a spiritual experience.

You are a spiritual being having a human experience."

~ The origin seems to be uncertain. It has been attributed to
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Wayne Dayer, and others.)

THIS HUMAN EXPERIENCE

By Linda Eve Diamond

How odd it is to be sitting in traffic when only yesterday

I was light as stardust and danced among celestial bodies

and you, who used to draw the faces of the moon,
sit in a small room trying to make tattered ends meet.

These earthly bodies we wear are funny things, too, 

walking water balloons filled with blood and bones,

hormones and pheromones, poetry and prose,
intricate nervous systems and enigmatic souls.

We reason and connect through minds so complex,
we can easily forget, outsmart, and fool ourselves

and our racing thoughts drip through a slow
funnel of words, where so much is often lost.

Then there’s this thin skin of ours and pain 

which makes me wish for thicker skin.

But that might feel too closed off,,

too far from touch, too far from you.

I adore your beautiful, funny costume and

 the light, behind your eyes, feels like home.

This light in you reminds me that love is a gift  

unparalleled in the universe, and how magical it is

to be with you, to navigate this strange world with you,
to talk about it all with you and to let it all go with you

and to dance with you, from time to time, the way we do—

 uplifted, floating, glowing—the way we danced with Orion.

This poem was honored with an Artists Embassy International 1st Place Award and included in the 2024 Dancing Poetry Festival.

An earlier version of this was one of my earliest poems (and the title poem of my first poetry book in 2007). The poem, which I first wrote to someone I only imagined at the time, is dedicated now and alway to my husband, Jeff. ♥️

Image: Photo with my husband, Jeff Novick, on our 10-Year Anniversary

(blended with a photo from the NASA photo gallery). :)