It’s not a surprise that the sweep of changes and minor disasters have collected a bit of detritus in the corners of our psyches. It’s hard to imagine sweeping our mental houses clean to begin a new year with so much… stuff weighing us down. A few years ago, a few of us got together to do a haiku project in November, but as always, I wasn’t ready to begin when everyone else was, wasn’t able to put my gratitude shoes on and walk that route.
TBH, I still can’t say I’m ready. Not that I’m not grateful for things, but there’s still so much swirling through the gray corridors of my brain. So, I rely on my usual exercise of seeing. I can look. I can say what I see. And, what I see is winter light. The graying, fading, fast darkening world will bring its usual insights – or perhaps none at all, and we will sit with the shifting of the season and be present. Either way – I’m here, and so are you, perhaps. I don’t promise a daily visit, but we are here, and so is the winter light. This poem reminds me of driving around hoping to see the aurora in 28 degree weather in Iceland one year. We never did see it, but the vast silence of waiting under the limitless sky was a profound experience.
community in darkness
after a false dawn
we are awake, and waiting,
breaths the only life.