Birth

Falling through

The thick fog under the jagged cliff

Where she left Ruru

To bask under Sun's shine,

Mother Earth prepared her lesson

In No Birth and

Heard a plea for birth that was

Just as strong as Ruru's fear of death.

Afraid of the emptiness in his own heart,

King Janaka longed for a child

On whom he could pour his love and

wash away the dust that had settled in the cracks

Of his charmed but lonely life.

His heart is a fountain of love and affection,

From which his people drink and nourish their souls.

So Mother Earth found her second student and waited

To show him the child within himself.

Blindly running from the emptiness within,

Janaka took refuge in ploughing a field.

Tears eroded away his thoughts of loneliness

And carried them to the soil beneath him.

Each drop watered Mother Earth.

Fingers formed

And cells collided,

Meshing together and weaving

A human into being.

But the form before Janaka's eyes was just a body

And even though its

Heart had just started beating

and its blood had just started pumping,

Its energy had already

Pulsed through the universe

Since the beginning of time.

Janaka sought out the tiny fingers

Of the babe and watched as they curled

Around his own.

He named the baby Sita

after the furrow that gave her life.

A child gave him permission to

Caress and tenderly hold

To coddle and imbue another with warmth.

None was loved as Sita was,

But love drew her away from the King

And into Rama's arms.

Janaka built his happiness on the

Loose foundation

Of another and watched

As its healthy soil turned to mud

And begin to slip away.

Emptiness crept back into Janaka's mind

In Sita's absence and occupied

Old, forgotten corners.

So much love but never for himself.

Mother Earth considered the kind king

Who still underestimated the power of emptiness.

Blank pages house words

and need just as much care.

Behind the clouds of Sita and his people

Janaka was an empty, blue sky.

Without clouds, his reflection was too visible

In the oceans below him.

Too visible

Were the hard edges

Of forced, kingly strength

That poked through

His softness.

Sita knew Janaka needed to see emptiness

Before he could understand transformation, so

She carried a depressed Janaka to the field,

Laid him down, and let him weep.

"Janaka, from your tears,

The soil transformed and created me.

The child you always wanted

has always been within you,

but you always covered it with clouds

And never allowed it to play."

Janaka's finger curled around Sita's

As she scattered back into the soil

Whence she came.

With his beautiful cloud gone, Janaka

Could see the reflection of his Inner child

And tenderly held him.

For all the tears that

Nobody dried

And all the skinned knees that

Nobody kissed,

He gave his inner child all the love

Everybody else missed.

With his inner child gently resting,

Janaka took refuge in the empty blue sky,

calling it home.

Only then could he see all the way to

The Earth's core

Its intense heat pulsing through

Hard rock up into

The grains of soil teaming with life

Budding into a sprout and becoming part of a bird

Flying into his skies

Only to disassemble back into the dirt

And seep through the ground's pores

Becoming molten rock and dripping back into the Earth's core

So it was clear that Mother's

Transformation was only disguised as Sita's creation.