There are acts of Mercy,
like dying,
that come along—
dying, a shape shifter, often a trickster when death settles in.
Death and dying, not always the same.
There are worse things
than that.

Step out into the tall grass, wade in to your hips,
fall to your knees.
Breathe now, let the mercy of dying carry you out into the field of your joy and pain where nothing is too early or late, always on time.

Mercy arrives when you’re too complacent or comfortably numb, or too busy in the business of your life.
Mercy steps in with the calamitous, the tragic— anything to keep us from forgetting,
and we are never forgotten by that which sees—
get us to notice down to our breath within.

There is a space of profound stillness inside where death lives, where
all possibilty exists, where we
begin and end, again and again.

This is Mercy calling.
She knows you by heart and by name.

Susan Wolfington 2020