Day 7 Prompt: Write a circular poem.  This one is for my friend Saheeb.
“The eye is the first circle, the horizon which it forms is the second: and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

The heart, too, is a circle,
the horizon expanding to infinity
or contracting into a small black hole.

The work, you say, is to keep opening,
casting that radius wider
at every turn of the wheel,
to hold everything within its protective arc,
the bright flowers and the white-hot stones.

You looked through the windows
into the soul
and saw.

Saw the round bud of the heart opening,
itself a circle, the radius expanding.

When I begin to say
that I am you and you are I
then the pain that you wear
must wound me too.

This is the work,
to widen that horizon that lies within
to hold the world, if we must.

This is the burden we choose to carry:
To be a watcher, a weight-bearer,
to inwardly transmute these stones
we are given to bear
into gems of great value.
To keep soft,
to let the ego slip down
into a weightless place.

Speak your story.
Let it fall like a stone
into the quiet pool of my heart.
The circles expand out and outward,
not matter but pure energy,
more doors opening.

These are the doors we step into.
These are the circles we enter:

I see you.
I feel you.
I know you.
I recognize myself in you.

Namaste.