Joy Born of Sorrow

Abundance born of poverty.
Freedom born of oppression.

Never, never is my intent to dishonor
  or denigrate the devastating impact
  of poverty and oppression on a soul.

Yet, I continue to search for the meaning
  of ideas gifted me with the concomitant
  injunction to transmit their significance.

Abundance born of poverty.
Freedom born of oppression.

Experiences, mundane and momentous,
  have been gifted for my enlightenment
  on these matters of the soul embodied.

So, I petition them for another lesson.
  I am ruminating on my ephemerality
  on this plane, and in this incarnation.

I note nascent thoughts and feelings
  and witness their journey through
  my heart, mind, soul...this mortal.

I am recognizing how I attach meaning to new events,
  namely through connections to previous experiences, 
  and how those attachments constrain my perception.

I was planning for the night before my heart surgery.
  As I planned sleeping arrangements and our dinner,
  I witnessed a sickening feeling quicken in my heart.

I followed that pain to a Thanksgiving long past,
  and the dinner my mother so flawlessly created
  for her family, the eve before she started to die.

Sorrow, tears, mourning her death, my loss of her, still.
  Serving dinner to my family on the eve of my surgery
  retrieves this memory and reveals another attachment.

I remember that dinner and grieve her absence from my life.
  But to attach the path of her life to my circumstance denies
  me the precious experience of my own existence unfolding.

Recognizing this attachment, I can release it from my heart.
  Free of the attachment, I can prepare dinner for my family
  on the eve of my surgery to celebrate our love and my life.

Joy born of sorrow.

Abundance born of poverty.
Freedom born of oppression.