Acceptance

From the virgin mouths of calla lilies
bled white into a place beyond existence
and knee-deep in still summer water,
the scent of millennia lifts 
across a few dark measures
in my eyes
to meet the silent moon.
Between the flowers and this completion,
There is no journey 
save the one
of clear white mystery,
acceptance of truth
as it is.
  
Someone recently measured a piece of the moon
in pursuit of mystery,
to tell it exactly like it is,
and found that she was old,
like Earth, as old as origin itself,
found her an enigma,
her trail inscrutable,
her limits unmeasurable.
  
Between you and me
there is the hard, clean edge
of your mountain dwelling
and this silent moon,
and what else is there to measure?
  
There are no words to tell this place
like it is.
  
© Nina Audino
1992
Won 1st place in The Carl Cherry Center for the Arts Poetry Contest, open to all ages, 1993.
Won a place in The Creative Feminine – Poets with Painters: Collaborative Responses  
exhibit held in the Santa Cruz Art League in March of 1993. (Sponsored by the Monterey Bay Women's Caucus for the Arts and the Santa Cruz/Monterey Writers' Union Local.)