5.1.16 Nightfall

"From afar, drawing near, falls the night."

                          Horace Trim

 

5.1.16 Some broad rushing river

Down by the Connecticut

   the cold rain fell

spattering the dry earth

   singing all along the 

broad rushing river

5.1.16 Some land locked cosmos

I was walking by the corn fields, adorned with its Fall detritus, 

and caught sight of thousands of small white blossoms, 

shimmering in the field 

like so many stars in some 

land locked cosmos.

5.1.16 We turn into the wind

Sometimes, we are struggling with such odds. Noticing when we are more belabored, noticing when our thoughts and determination begin to sink where our physicality is struggling, or our physical health tumbling after our obdurate sense of 'How can I manage this?’

There are so many 'This's in our lives from beginning to end. So that our capacity to develop our own flavor of resilience is essential. Because our responses to difficulty are a secondary wave that often challenges us as much as the initial hardship.

The exception is that we have choices about how to respond to great difficulty. We have resources to inch ourselves from flatlined in some swampy place, to up on our elbows, to struggling to put things back into perspective, to finding within and without the way that doing this might seem hard, but in fact is how we are feeling about it.

The thing we choose to do is simpler. It is simply settling ourselves, empathizing with ourselves. Getting clearer, and then focusing.

On pushing up from our hands.

On pulling upon one knee, and then the other.

On raising our head, without being distracted by the idea of how impossibly hard this is to do.

Of getting one foot, and then the other, back flat on that ground.

Of pushing ourselves to standing, without falling over again.

Of opening our eyes, flexing our beautiful muscles.

Of putting aside the chatter of 'What is wrong’ and ‘ We can’t do this’ and

‘This is too hard’ and ‘It doesn’t work’ and ‘We are too weak.’

Which is all before the chatter gets all warmed up and starts spinning the destructing stories form the past.

We embrace and silence the chatter in a second. We don’t negotiate with the chatter. We turn, smiling, from the chatter, and let it roll by without ceremony.

We turn to that which works. We pull a small smile upon our face. We turn toward what we can do. We feel our feet on solid ground and that is enough. We turn into the wind.

5.1.16 As the night fell

Last night, as evening swept into town and the land all about us darkened, 

preparing for sleep, the golden sun settled itself 

into the sea of the deep blue skies 

as the earth turned and night fell.