We Have Gone, We Have Returned
To My Father’s Child,
Ati lo, Ati de,
What can I say,
As April kisses May,
She shares her thought,
You are not the seeker but the sought.
Stillness is the pathway to truth,
And love is the lens of your youth.
The last shall be the first,
For he who waits shall soar in His rest.
Beloved, I have been revising my book The Other Side of the Door and it will be reuploaded to Amazon shortly. While revising, a poem caught my attention, and frankly speaking it does that every time I read it, demanding that I sit with it in stillness and eat of the bread it offers. I would like to share that with you today, that it may provoke you to stillness and great meditation.
Strangely, you will not find this poem in Winepress, the body that houses the poems in the book, but rather it is embedded in a short story called “The Story About Nothing,” tucked somewhere within The Voice of the Wind.
For context, this poem comes from a twelve-year-old boy who chose to perform it before a crowd that failed to discern what he was saying, but whose words changed the life of one man who was listening.
The poem is called Ati lo, Ati de (We have gone, we have returned.)
Ati lo, Ati de
Ati lo, Ati de
What can I say?
Everything is, and nothing is as it seems.
The child is the father of the man.
The point births the circle.
The key is the door.
—
Ati lo, Ati de
And now the town crier cries.
Time is a product of light.
What was, is. What will be, is.
Time submits only to love.
You find the end in the beginning.
—
Ati lo, Ati de
Here is some water for dear life.
Thought is water, and The Word is fire.
The water in the beginning is the fire at the end.
The Living Water is the All-Consuming Fire.
The true form is spirit.
—
Ati lo, Ati de
Now I echo the voice of the wind.
Grace is the logic of love.
Love is the conscious awareness of what is.
Fear is love’s bane, and doubt crumbles the pillars of faith.
Give up everything for love. Give up everything but love.
Beloved, breathe me your wisdom and feed me your truth. Which of the child’s words tugged at your garment, demanding it sit with you, and what do you make of it?
Be still and love,
Enosedeba