What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

There is no fear in love; indeed, perfect love casts out fear.  – John the Divine

I get up before the wind, I love the calm of morning.
Its tone seems holy. Then, like the dawning of a migraine,
the wind stirs, the light hardens, and old fears rush in.

Today, while having morning coffee, the wind seemed
to enquire, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
and without thinking, I answered,
“I would talk to more people.”

There’s my truth. My fear. Not the terror that flies by night.
Just a tongue-tied fear of being misunderstood, rejected.
A kind of stammering self-consciousness, wary and watching,
alert to hedges and fences.

I heard this phrase once, the arrogance of belonging,
and I thought, how liberating to recline in that space.
Like a superhero, with an innocent, beneficent,
force field of confidence.

Once, in the 70s, friends whose faces I still see, close to me,
sat together under the spell of the Pacific and some kind of love drug,
and though you’ll say that’s synthetic, I saw possibility.

The wind spoke then too, in wave after wave of welcomings,
and I, emptied of anxiety, moved outwardly, on a tide of gratitude.
How we looked to each other, how the gates of our hearts
swung open in wordless belonging.

The wind is still up. From a neighbouring campsite,
a tall, brown, woman, wearing bright blue plaid,
waves and calls out, “Good morning Luv, beautiful morning!”
It’s a voice I seem to know. A voice I’ve heard before.
A voice, perhaps, that’s always been there.