#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Oh, Charlie, the barking, the barking. Awake again, early. And grateful, because as hard as it is sometimes to get up early - I've been so active I need more rest - I'm always grateful because the day feels longer and fuller and today was an especially busy one. More busy than the frog's day, in the little pond. At rest? But always just about to leap.
Today I leapt back into my long essay, hadn't touched it in two months. Realized I needed something to bring to my group tonight and I had a section ready that just needed tweaking. I was so happy to be back inside this essay - finding I liked it still, and feeling motivated to keep going, which really means, at this point, to keep revising what I've already written. And so I brought it, and was grateful for the feedback and I drove home still motivated, still pleased with it, and so I leapt in and will stay in for now.
Except, I'm letting myself get more disturbed than I'd like to be by the behavior of certain others lately. Tonight, I am wanting to feel more peace, less frustration – I am impatient for a sense of peace - I want the peace now! So, I went looking and found, not peace, but this poem by Denise Levertov which is a start toward finding patience for find the metaphors toward finding the words, toward feeling peace about these petty botherings:
“A voice from the dark called out,
’The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.”
All photos and text ©Kelly DuMar 2018 unless otherwise attributed