the phoenix does not return to the burning building, the phoenix is the fire (2025)

the catalytic impact of what held you
may attempt recognition as the most significant home from which you arose
but your spiral up was due to the wings you pushed from the spine,
the persistence out of the decay
smouldering breath beyond the concave of change where the heart stilled,
the heat of emotions in the throat,
& the furnace that was your crucible, burst open one day,
after years in isolation, in silence,
because it was recognized as the gift of space itself;
though your point of departure may stay the centre of your evolution,
as your wings rise out of the container and you take note of all that falls off into it,
see that that which held you was only a holding pattern,
the emptiness was an incubation
until you burned it down, refined its meaning
and transmuted it from rubble into crystalline awareness.
the flame is the true hearth,
the hawk that becomes a phoenix is unbridled from what confined and defined it,
while quiet in the newness of the moment, a sun is rising,
it is the eternal fire mistaken for a gentle dawn due to its softness in the distance.
pure atomic energy activated by the ancient knowing
that sat inside the rot and dark, like a seed pushing up to the daylight,
what cracks open and off shows the depth of shadow and power of light,
both polarities of a limitless forming oneness.

blessed incense swirls among red cedar structures that hold reverence for this fire, knowing it once before, they breathe prayers into the etheric realm that will never be susceptible to burning should chaos revisit,
because they are carried and received by the same ancient force of power beyond resilience that this sun and this phoenix glides along,
transmitting knowledge by staying suspended in the beloved.
Green malachite frames the risen self to give scaffolding to change,
the energetic architecture of everything gone
consolidate into radiant minerals that tell you how to reemerge
the floor swirls in animated luscious layers of lifetimes passed, blooming flowers and retaining ambiguous vessels of what’s gone and what’s present,
underneath all is the dawning skyline of the journeys made and struggles conquered,
celestial visions in the distance, so far away and insignificant now
in comparison to the grandeur of this rising.

in departing from where one was left, we harness the power of the present moment and understand that the phoenix does not return to the burning building to heal its catalytic death, the phoenix is the rebirth of all things,
it is the flame that catalyzed the ending of what held it down,
into the rebirth that will witness its unfurling eternal strength,
that was always there.

- SAB MEYNERT