Acceptance

I realize it’s been a while since I posted something on here. Life gets busy sometimes. Also, with so much going on in the world, it can be hard to make sense of it all. At times, when I write that’s all I’m trying to do. Most of that is just me trying to make sense of all the stuff swirling in my head. My head can definitely be a busy place. For years I was meticulous about writing every day. It was ‘something I had to do,’ and it served me well, and I loved it. For me, writing still is the space that I can be in when I can’t speak or interact. It still holds that incredibly sacred spot for me. It always will. When I find that I am just frozen. I don’t know who to talk to or what I’d say or how to make sense of something, I still know that it’s time to sit down and write. Honestly, at the beginning of the year, I was going to take a break from writing poems and was going to concentrate on writing a piece of ‘non-fiction,’ which I started multiple times. I found myself missing poems and sneaking them in every so often. I also found myself writing less. I spent years getting up early in the morning and writing for hours before work, and I would not trade that time for anything in the world. I hope to go back to it at some point. At some point, my life began to feel like a a checklist. I found myself discouraged and disgusted at the end of days when everything was not accomplished. Living your life as a checklist is no way to live your life. The saddest thing is when you begin to feel bogged down by things you once loved. There were a lot of things I would’ve been happy to get ‘tired of,’ and ‘release,’ and writing was not one of them. I decided that I was going to take time and ‘write for myself,’ and ‘write when I wanted to write.’ If I went a week without writing something, that was ok. If I sat down and wrote for a few hours, that was ok. The only goal was to enjoy it. I’ve talked about it before on this forum, but I let go of some good scholarships in Creative Writing years ago. Things like life and various situations got in the way, and, I think, even back then, I knew that I could not allow ‘this sacred space,’ this ‘thing I love so much,’ become work. This year when I found it on the ‘checklist’ of things “I should be doing,’ I again could not allow it to become that. I need writing, love writing, and respect writing too much to ever let it be a chore or something to be ‘checked off a to do list.’ I wrote this poem about two years ago. It was written around my birthday. Re-reading it today, it sort of surprises me. I was in a much clearer headspace than I am today. It’s almost as if I could see what was coming. It was the beginning of really questioning ‘why do I do that?’ and ‘why is it important to me?’ It was definitely at the beginning of a period in my life, where those questions seemed to be showing up more and more. When I wrote it, they were sort of visiting. I feel like re-reading it today, they’ve moved in. The conclusion though is the same. The story ends the same way it did two years ago when I wrote it, with the idea that I can only dress and prepare for the moment. The weather will surely change, and I will change with it. The only constant thing I can try to do is accept it. It’s really hard work, and I’m working on it. I think we all are. It’s incredibly hard and I just got to pat everyone on the back and say, ‘you’re doing great.’ Accepting ‘what is,’ is often the hardest change we’re asked to make.

Acceptance

Is this the age the continents collide within me? Forming the fortressing Himalayas to boundary and protect for years?
Or is this the age where I can be mountains, easy enough for crossing, scrubbed down through time, the easy beauty of the Appalachians? Or is this somewhere in between?

I whisper my name to myself. I swim inward, flow outward. My whole life people have put my name to water. Luke, that kid is a fish. Luke, I’ll take you to the water that always calms you down.
Have I become an ocean so vast and widespread, so many parts unseen, unknown.. or am I a quiet cabin lake swimmable and known?

This poet’s eyes, now a bit more touched by the wind tell me one thing, I still see the sun rising in them, bashing graceful, to the long sweet day that lay before me, as my eyes watch majestic sun rising in the east.

I’ve been over your blue ponds and your deep pleasures, inside your roots and seen you shed your exoskeleton. Lifted from beneath hooves, stuck and maimed in dirt, that’s whispered some dirty secrets that were wise and delectable. I’ve been where the trees meet the naked sky and spent most days riding motionless in a breeze that says nothing but gets me from one ordinary flower to the next.

When I started writing, it was the time of the big bang. An initial state of high density and temperature. My throat spewed galaxies.
I still can bear a star, but I also can create a black hole. After you’ve exploded, you have to become knowledgable in cooling.

I am somewhere weightless in the galaxy. I am somewhere between learning to love my life and letting go of needing to love my life. I’m still trying to form and then realizing forming takes no effort from me. I can’t will a season that is not yet ready to be seen. I can just look out the window and dress appropriately for the weather served.