In the morning
I could ask myself
how I want to feel
but there is no ‘want to’ yet.
That will come
as surely as light filters
through the blinds.
Softly, winter slow and
as quiet as my cat
padding across my bed.
“You can only come to the morning through the shadows.”
~ J.R.R.Tolkien
Kindness shows up
in the strangest places.
The first was while
I took out the trash.
The second came while
I took a seat on the bus.
What could be more strange?
Two days in a row!
In these unsettled days of
cultural upheaval and
mudslinging, it was a
very welcome warmth.
I wonder. Could random acts of kindness
and the soul softening they bring
waft upwards through the layers
of harsh political jousting?
“If the flap of a butterfly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado,
it can equally well be instrumental in preventing a tornado”
~ Edward Lorenz, mathematician and meteorologist
When I was a part of
the vast army of nurses,
an employee,
practicing my craft,
I had a certain belief.
A belief in,
not only nursing and nurses,
but the frailties of the human body. The ways of walking, talking, coping with the pain and strife of whatever condition was within them.
Now, as a woman alone,
my belief was confused
and many days still is.
Confused about my place in all this emptiness;
where do I step;
am I enough;
are there rules I should follow.
Until, step by step, I learned
to adapt lessons from the past,
to find the steps,
the guideposts,
the anchors for this retired life
and to believe in myself.
“Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Despite temperatures being well below freezing ~ far enough that the actual number is irrelevant ~ it’s just
freezing. That hasn’t stopped the shoppers, the children going home from school, and those of us just blocks from
our destination. The topic of weather ~ too cold or too hot ~ can get monotonous and quite frankly boring. Almost
like politics: predictable, can be frightening,
and at the same time changeable just when
everything seems settled and comfortable.
Despite all the discussion today, the worry
is that in a couple of days, banks of snow
will possibly be melting, flooding the streets
with winter muck. Kind of like politics.
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
 |
| A four foot snow bank! |
have forgotten that spring
arrives. What may look
dead and dull, hides
life and growth flowing from
roots deep in the soil of home.
“Our power is in our homeplace, in our roots..”
~ Sylvia Linsteadt, The Wild Folk Rising
The evening grows late.
Great yawns remind me
that my body clock works.
Time ticks inexorably onward
as evening grows later still.
“A well -spent day brings happy sleep.”
~ Leonardo da Vinci
Silent hills, blanketed in snow that drifted across the lake, through barren bush,
found the eye of my camera
to be frozen in time.
“Photography takes an instant out of time,
altering life by holding it still.”
~ Dorothea Lange, documentary photographer
