I wanted to write a poem
but I listened to an audiobook
and weeded the zinnias
and repotted some plants
and tried to figure out
why I sometimes parrot things
I’ve heard a thousand times
but do not actually believe.

I wondered how to shift
from default reactions
to thoughtful responses
when those defaults
feel so ingrained and
I have so little precedent
for expressing more
newly-acquired ideals.

I watered the blanket flowers
and kale and lamented
the tomatoes I neglected
to harvest before they
became suitable only
for compost and
thought about ways
we perpetuate unhelpful
patterns because
transformation is slow
and difficult and trying
a new direction
involves risk.

I wanted to write a poem
but I tended to plants
and got lost in thoughts
and now it’s late
and I should be helping
make dinner but there
are so many things
I want to change.

May you give yourself the gift of idleness
to nap, meander, simply take a break.

Consider the lilies and birds, trees and fields,
bask in their wise teachings.

Let yourself fade from view, seek refuge,
change, let go, lie fallow.

Cultivate ease, and call it good.
Cease to strive, and call it beauty.

Gaze at the clouds or the moon or the falling leaves
and lose yourself in wonder.

Leave the to-do list in the drawer, email unanswered,
there are other times for doing.

You are enough.
You deserve rest.

No messy room or unpaid bill or daydreaming afternoon
changes your inherent worth.

Gift yourself times of leisure, stillness, being,
and bless the seasons for showing the way.

Today words are scarce,
mind too tired from a too-busy week.
Meander in the woods to settle,
regroup, rest.

Sunlight streaming
through pawpaw leaves
on fall-tinged breezes,
the only poetry in reach.

Waning garden in late summer sun,
standing, bare feet in soil,
begrudgingly admiring
the efficiency of a hornworm
on the lucky tiger tomato plant
I brought home from the farmer’s market
in Spring.

The seedling grew out of control
while we were away in July,
latent efforts to curtail its spread
unsuccessful enough
there’s an overflowing bowl
of red-tinged harvest
on the kitchen table.

I decide to cede the branch
and the two partly-nibbled fruit
to the bright green caterpillar’s lunch.

Turning to the fading cosmos,
reaching out to grasp
a dried, star-like cluster,
previously a delicate white flower,
and marveling at the
seeds across my palm.

The potential for infinite
future seasons of blossoms
from a single bloom.

Pausing, drinking in this interruption
of scarcity-obsessed, commodified structures,
savoring this oasis of abundance,
while my breath becomes
a blessing and a prayer.

The mirror reflects my eyes,
the same dark-rimmed irises,

but behind them are flames, heart on fire,
burning away what is not me.

Inherited facades turning to ash
while I wait to see if I’m a phoenix

or a moon or a tide
or the whole damn sky.

Imperfections vining out,
uncontained, unwanted, unwieldy,
unable to keep unseen,
multiplying in growing awareness.

Inability to bridge divides within and between.
Impossibility of accomplishing the to-do list.
Incapable of letting go things undone.
Incredulous over ideals unachieved.

Empathy, humanity, second chances,
offered freely to others,
don’t apply to self
in the darkness of comparison.

And yet, even roadside weeds,
are magic, dew-drenched,
incandescent,
bathed in morning light.

Wondering now what could
become of imperfections no longer
shielded from compassion,
allowed to transform in a new day’s sun.

Finding myself once again
lost, adrift, unsure what to do with
all these unknows collected along the way.

Scattering chaff,
what I hope is chaff,
then combing through remnants
for anything useful.

Schemes to get back to myself failing,
remaining dormant, resorting to deep breaths
to ward off despair.

All attempts to restart unable to thrive,
like seeds in last year’s potting soil,
refusing to germinate without renewal.

Spiraling, possibly out of control,
possibly back around
to deeper knowing of a truth
that saved me from myself before.

In Thursday’s waning dusk
the jaws of an oncoming storm

swallowed the side-smile moon,
lightning giving glimpses

of the monster expanding
until the sky was devoured too.

I know she remains in place,
unaffected by the clouds

growing between us in the night,
yet I feel her obscuration as an absence.

Alone now, my pace quickens
to reach home before the tempest overtakes me.

Rilke told us to live the questions,
but these days they burn and sting
and run ever onward,
undeterred,
not unlike the sunscreen sweating into my eyes
or the ants traversing the back of my hand
and creases of my knees
as I kneel in the sun pulling weeds
from my sad excuse for a strawberry patch.

What the ground ivy didn’t choke,
the chipmunks and deer had for breakfast
one of the weeks (or months) this Spring
I was too busy to give it my attention.

Now, I should be doing other,
more productive things,
but I’m determined to salvage
the few, meager plants that remain.

Pulling up vines and dead leaves,
pondering the win-lose ways
society has been organized absent caring attention
and who is on the losing end
and if there is any way to salvage
the life we’re sharing on this earth.

Structures and power keep giving some people more
and they take it because they can
while so many and the planet suffer.

We choose political and ideological sides,
refusing to give an inch until there’s
no room for compromise,
no space for mediation,
no appetite for finding another way.

I don’t like the thought
of having to concede anything
that’s important to me
but I wring my hands at the
planetary and political and societal disasters
unfolding and at all we’re losing
and I long for anything
that might start us in a new direction.

And today I bake in the Summer heat,
blinking away SPF 30
and trying to brush ants away without crushing them
and thinking about the questions
I might be too stubborn
or too much of a coward to live,
and longing for all the answers I don’t yet know.

Freeing, after decades thinking this is who I am,
how I’m flawed, knowing now the ways trauma
deforms, diminishes, defines,
not the person, but responses.

Finally seeing internal debates
resolve from how-could-I questions
into compassion for the ways I learned
to be quiet, to go along, to play a part required by others
to keep myself safe from what I could not control.
Clarity cascading over what I now long to transform.

Freeing, yes,
but trauma and its implications
can’t be shed like a garment,
one swift motion over the head,
tossed in a rubbish bin and carted away
with other unwanted things.

It’s interwoven.
Intertwined.
Entangled with
parts of myself I might want to keep
if only I could tell the difference.

That’s the tricky part, though,
left wondering, sorting,
trying to determine
which parts stemmed from trauma
and which parts are really
me.

Casting about for answers,
wondering what will be left
or if I’ll unravel entirely,
until the effort, the noise of it,
finds me craving silence.

Not silence like a wall, a stone, a word unsaid.
Silence like a seed, a bloom, a leaf unfurling
to draw the sun’s rays.
Silence that shapes, expands, refines,
until I can name my true self for myself.
Out loud.