The Nature of Us

I heard about you yesterday, on my television set
Described with words and pictures illuminating your threat
I read about your nature: your desires and your lusts
And I knew right away, you were a breed I could not trust.

You see, alone I am powerful, strong and confident
But then when you come near I begin to lose all common sense.
Whether you’re white, yellow, brown or tan
I am the prey, because you are a man.

The cigarette butts in the corner of the stairwell are nestled together. These are the signs of human life. A group of us were trying to meet neighbours in an apartment building in Parkdale, Toronto, in order to converse with them about Baha’u’llah, about the state of their community and about the nature of us. A small group of us had been doing this for two weeks to gain experience in having conversations of spiritual import. On this particular evening, unexpectedly, a new group of Baha’is joined us. I felt very nervous about outreaching with a new partner. It was almost the end of the night and usually at this point, especially if I am not coming into contact with very many people, I begin to eye the time, hoping it will leak on by so I can go home.

You can’t say that you’ve truly tasted an awkward pause until you’ve visited someone in their home unannounced to converse about a topic that is dear to you but that you haven’t yet developed the skill to communicate.

When everything went wrong we moved away from what was real and now I’m left with a container to study. I live on a beach covered in upright bottles, each one nestled in its own crevice of sand. If any passerby were to come upon us I take pleasure in imagining his shock at having discovered his dreams unfolded.

There once was a ray of sunshine not seen by any person, creature or plant. Every morning he would wake up early and ask the sun, “Please sun, let me shine on something important today. Let me shine on the Great Wall of China so that tourists can see it. Let me shine on a scientist about to make an influential discovery. Let me shine on a great or famous person. Let me be that ray of light that tells an egg its ready to hatch. Let me light up a photograph before it is taken. Dear sun, please please please.”

The sun didn’t have a lot of time for this ray of sunshine.

I did not know how to wield love.

It turned in my hands like a heavy sword, stronger than its artificer had intended;

too much of a match for my grip that was soft and scared.

It was meant to slice through the veils and mark a path in the woods for us to follow.

Instead it dropped, awkward and with all of its metal weight.

It cut when it was meant to guide

It hurt, when it was supposed to protect.

I did not have the strength yet for such a task.

We look at faces as if we see
One another’s capacity
We make assumptions, we tell lies
Yet still consider ourselves so wise
We flash smiles, and laugh around
While the pain we feel within is profound
We gaze at bodies their colors and size
And still believe we have chaste eyes

Every day the sun would rise at the same place on the horizon.

This is how the rooster knew to crow and the cow to let down her milk and the farmer to rise from bed and the children to go to school.

In the summertime as the sun’s rays reached the garden, the Daisies would open up from their long night’s sleep. This is how they got their name; the Day’s Eye.