2. No llora por haberle amor llagado,
“Otras canciones a lo divino de Cristo y el alma”
que no le pena verse así afligido,
aunque en el corazón está herido;
mas llora por pensar que está olvidado.
Month: January 2023
Running Poem
Running down the path
snow swirls and twirls in the wind.
As we laugh and smile
broken pieces shift in me:
heart beats in time with my feet
Found Word Quadrille
An interesting prompt was put out this week in the poets pub. The prompt was to put together a poem with the first lines of the first poems of each month of 2022. I had a rough 2022, so I was unable to pull that one off, but I did use it as inspiration to take the first 44 words of the last 44 poems I put onto m\y blog. With a little rearranging, here is a quadrille written with the first words of the last 44 poems I wrote. It is a bit clunky, but it was a fun experiment. I also started too many blessing haikus with the word “may.” Those mays were a nightmare to work into the structure while making sense.
Objectively, May The Broken Friend Like What Some May Like? May The Homeless? May We? Like Problematic Broken Innkeeper May Softly Break, We May Perish. May Spring’s Crabapple Poison? May Ramen Treading? I tumbled. I Lace when I may. Oh Jesus may… Shalom may?
“Tumbling Rocks”
Some friends recently blessed me with a rock tumbler. Although it seems strange, it was quite thoughtful. I wander around in the wilderness often these days. You do not need a full wallet to enjoy the forest. You do not need a credit card to walk on stone covered beaches. Living in a space with gorges and wilderness means there are plenty of places to search for rocks.
Today the first stage of tumbling came to an end: rocks gathered on New Year’s have spent a week tumbling together through the new possibilities. I have checked on them as they tumbled through the days: rotating over and over, first visible but then swallowed in the slurry of grit and water. In time, even bits of themselves joined in the chaotic tumbling. Washed, dried, and looked over, each rock is the same yet different. With reluctance, they are tumbling again with finer grit. There is a lot of tumbling in their future.
I sympathize with a rock for the first time in my life. I journey in shoes that have walked down long roads. My feet have grown calloused only through painful blisters and my legs have known spasming muscles waking me from the deepest slumber. My heart and soul have wounds to match as the days have not been nearly as beautiful as I once imagined. There are pieces of me that I will never have back and there are edges rounded off of my heart through night after night of tumbling through life’s grit-filled wasteland. Aye, there is beauty, but that beauty has come at a great cost.
Tumbled and jostled
through the dark days and cold nights
as life grinds it all
Winter’s strength
Spring’s heart glows above
as a wintry heart withdraws
as cold bones draw strength:
glacial wings swaddle shoulders
lifting burdens birthed in ice
Pokéjoke: Gotta make ‘em all
Objectively, yes:
shellfish are adaptable
so do be careful
“The Wild Woods”
As January dawns, the year behind has finally ended. There were bleak nights, broken dreams, and tears aplenty. While there was beauty, there was often grief and loss. It hurt to think of all that had been and all that would never come again.
In the woods by an isolated lake, scant days before continuing the uphill climb through my forties, an elderly dog and I meandered through the branches. January snow was unseasonably absent and there were shocks of green moss and patches of red berries everywhere. A fallen trunk shattered open to reveal the mystery born forth into the world from a single seed left behind by oblivious critters in the woods. The space is sacred and thin as I walk in lands where the natural transcends mere words.
For a while, the woods were all there was in this world. Thoughts of loss waited in the car, but in the woods there was beauty to be found, wonder to behold, and even the simple challenge of not letting the canine drag us into another bog while seeking an errant smell. For a brief hour or two, the world shrank down to a world where the brown trunks swayed only gently as the wind found only bare branches to tickle. In the wild woods, a broken heart could be whole for the eternal but brief moment where two souls simply wandered together.
The wild woods reach out: I almost look for "fair folk" as my heart finds peace.
My first entry in a long time with the D’verse Poets Pub. The challenge of the week is a haibun about the changing of years or what you are doing during this early part of January.
An Aside about Alcoholism and Zoom Bombing
You know, I don’t talk a lot about what happens in my program of recovery. I put in work daily and that’s really all I want to say. If you want to know more, I ordinarily invite people to go to an open meeting of a twelve step recovery program and learn more for themselves.
That being said, I get tired of people thinking they’re funny or cool and Zoom Bombing meetings. A lot of people in the rooms are in a lot of pain. Some have lost everything, others are in grief, and others are just doing their best to fulfill their twelfth step obligation to pass along what they’ve learned to others. There are tons of people in a lot of different vulnerable positions.
It isn’t okay to come into the rooms and tell people to kill themselves. It just isn’t acceptable to do your best to knock down people who are already hurting. It is awful and if you think it is funny, it really isn’t. You could kill someone by putting your hatred into the head of someone who is suffering from a disease which is related to choice but is not wholly a condition of volition.
As an aside to an aside, be nice to people in recovery if you’re a “normie.” You wouldn’t believe the stuff people throw at alcoholics for trying to recover.
Distracted Pastor Ramblings 