For Freedom

As a bird soars high

In the free holding of the wind

Clear of the certainty of ground

Into the grace of emptiness

To fulfil new voyagings,

May your life awaken

To the call of its freedom

As the Ocean absolves itself

Of the expectation of land

Approaching only

In the form of waves

That fill and pleat and fall

With such gradual elegance

As to make of the limit

A soronous threshold

Whose music echoes back along

The give and take of memory,

Thus may your heart know the patience

That can draw infinity from limitation.

As the embrace of the earth

Welcomes all we call death,

Taking deep into itself

The tight solitude of a seed

Allowing it time

To shed the grip of the former form

And give way to a deeper generosity

That will one day send it forth,

A tree into springtime

May all that holds you

Fall from its hungry ledge

Into the fecund surge of your heart.

(John O Donohue)